Rating: 
Summary: What a disappointment!
Review: A reviewer calls the writing style "lively". "Juvenile" is more appropriate. The information about the Maya themselves and their language accounts for perhaps 20 pages. The rest of the book investigates the soap opera of the Mayanist tribe, their rivalries, petty quarrels and personal idiosyncrasies. The author, scornful about "the dead hand of the academia", dwells on his (largely negative) fascination for Russia and for colorful Hochstapler who styled themselves "Maya specialists" in the 19th century. The reader is informed about the blue eyes of Yuri Knossorov (gazing over the Neva River), the mysterious appearance of the polymath Rafinesque-Schmalz (nobody knows what he looked like), the author's disagreement with Thompson's style of writing (including doggerels vs. a praise of Hemingway), the positive and negative sides of the Marxist approach...and what not. However, the Maya have a surprisingly minor role in this show. I assume there is no reason to question Coe's competency. Thus, the reason why he wrote such a book is twofold: 1) money 2) settling the scores. In addition, he probably does not expect the reader to have the intellect and the stamina to really learn something about the Maya writing system. Briefly, read this book if you need to appear intellectual in a public place, but actually prefer a mass market drama. The only other reason would be the illustrations (albeit black-and-white); they are more relevant than the author's ramblings.
Rating: 
Summary: A model of its genre
Review: A well-illustrated history of the decipherment of Maya script by a noted Mayan scholar. Coe provides a fine introduction to the decoding of ancient languages and to what is known of Mayan history, but he focuses on the strange and fascinating story of how Mayan characters came to be understood. Ironically, that decipherment transformed the Maya, once thought to be unusually peace-loving, into one the most vicious and violent of all ancient cultures, one delighting in torture and human sacrifice. Echoing this transformation of the Maya, Coe does not romanticize the scholars who worked at the decipherment. He notes their genius and stupidity, generosity and arrogance, and he bestows praise and settles scores in the process. As a historian who is sometimes questioned by undergraduates about the study of anthropology and archaeology, I now have a book to recommend. "Ask yourself," I will say, "whether you're ready to commit your life to this sort of intellectual environment, with all the intellectual excitement and pettiness displayed here." After reading this book, those students who are willing will know.
Rating:
Summary: ALL YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MAYA CODE
Review: As a general reader more interested in cryptographic code systems than in early American culture, this book was interesting but not the highlight of my day. However, I was impressed that the author was able to make me, a non-Maya-history person, get a pretty good grasp on what he was trying to convey, as well as the method he followed in attempting to solve the code. - The reason I purchased this book in the first place was because a long time ago I read a National Geographic article on the Maya code and how it was indecipherable until some day somebody would be clever enough to figure it out. After reading the book, I, a non-scholar, came away with my curiosity satisfied and proceeded on my way. - And, yes, I strongly agree with the 1997 reviewer who recommends that "bad mouthing" others does not belong in this kind of book; to do so causes the book to appear to be a vanity printing.
Rating:
Summary: A very nasty story by a lover of life
Review: Breaking the Maya Code is a great introduction to the complex world of decipherment. M.D. Coe - a leading figure in the story - knows most of the modern characters and has the writing skills to really bring the subject alive. Breaking the Maya Code begins with a wide-ranging introduction to the discipline of linguistics. There follows the story of how the Mayan script has been brought alive over the last one hundred years. Coe's familiarity with most of the modern characters, and his frustration with non-linguist archaeologists, means that this is not altogether a happy tale. Academic back biting, sabotage by old-generation prima donnas and subterfuge by the dirt diggers, has held back translation until very recent times. Coe believes this is a disgrace give how little time it took to decipher Egyptian and Hittite scripts. But there are modern heroes - Mexicans, Russians, Americans, Europeans etc - in a very international cast. These names are almost dietised by an author who clearly loves his profession and those who go out on a limb to make discoveries that others would try to block. Great Stuff.
Rating:
Summary: A very nasty story by a lover of life
Review: Breaking the Maya Code is a great introduction to the complex world of decipherment. M.D. Coe - a leading figure in the story - knows most of the modern characters and has the writing skills to really bring the subject alive. Breaking the Maya Code begins with a wide-ranging introduction to the discipline of linguistics. There follows the story of how the Mayan script has been brought alive over the last one hundred years. Coe's familiarity with most of the modern characters, and his frustration with non-linguist archaeologists, means that this is not altogether a happy tale. Academic back biting, sabotage by old-generation prima donnas and subterfuge by the dirt diggers, has held back translation until very recent times. Coe believes this is a disgrace give how little time it took to decipher Egyptian and Hittite scripts. But there are modern heroes - Mexicans, Russians, Americans, Europeans etc - in a very international cast. These names are almost dietised by an author who clearly loves his profession and those who go out on a limb to make discoveries that others would try to block. Great Stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye opener
Review: I lived in Guatemala most of my life, and i must confess that i had no idea what those inscriptions ment, or how were they sure that was true. Mr. Coe. starts with an introduction to the decipherment science, using the excelent example of Egyptian hieroglyphs. That in itself was pricesless for me. However i must add that after finishing the book i found myself with an increasing interest in Maya inscriptions. If you have ever been in any Mayan city you know that is impossible not to feel awe at those buildings and those beutiful inscriptions in the estelas. And even though this book is about the story of the decipherment of these inscriptions and not about the mayas, it definetly made me look at them differently. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Literature or Research?
Review: If you are new on the Maya path, you will find this book very interesting, easy to read and capturing. But, if you are a mayanist aficionado, better try another book, like Montgomery's, about Mayan writing, of David Drew's account of it. Coe, even when he made important apportations to mayan studies, is one of that scholars (like Thompson, his nemesis) that put the personal view on his research. So, this account is full of biased information and emotional catarsis. However, it is very readable, keeping you reading until the end, like a good mistery or detective story. Enjoy the reading, but if you want something serious, he is not the guy.
Rating:
Summary: Literature or Research?
Review: If you are new on the Maya path, you will find this book very interesting, easy to read and capturing. But, if you are a mayanist aficionado, better try another book, like Montgomery's, about Mayan writing, of David Drew's account of it. Coe, even when he made important apportations to mayan studies, is one of that scholars (like Thompson, his nemesis) that put the personal view on his research. So, this account is full of biased information and emotional catarsis. However, it is very readable, keeping you reading until the end, like a good mistery or detective story. Enjoy the reading, but if you want something serious, he is not the guy.
Rating:
Summary: The story of an incredible intellectual quest
Review: It took a long time before Maya script could be read in a coherent way. Up to the 1950s, no one was able to decipher the inscriptions chiselled into the Maya temples and palaces in the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. Although many attempts at decipherment had been undertaken in the 19th and early 20th century by a number of - in some cases rather quixotic - Maya enthusiasts, they all lacked the linguistic training and the touch of genius that might have led them to a breakthrough. Thus, by the middle of the 20th century the generally accepted view among Maya scholars was that those glyphs represented neither words nor syntactical constructions but rather that they were to be interpreted as purely mythological allusions. The undisputed leader of this school of thought was Eric Thompson, Maya expert at Washington's Carnegie Institution. Opposing views of the Thompson school had occasionally been heard before, but only in 1952 did there arise an opponent formidable enough to effectively challenge the established opinion on the Maya glyphs. That year, Yuri V. Knorosov, a researcher at then Leningrad's Institute of Ethnology published his view that the Maya script was logographic, meaning that it consisted of a. logograms that express the meaning of words and b. phonetic-syllable signs (comparable to modern Japanese). Although the ensuing dispute between followers of Thompson and supporters of Knorosov continued for many years, today it is the Knorosov apporach that is being recognized as having given the decisive impetus that led to the decipherment of most Maya glyphs. Over the years, Knorosov's method was refined by generation after generation of gifted Maya scholars, among them Michael Coe, the author of this book and now professor emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University. Having favoured the Knorosov approach from the outset, Mr Coe understandably is critical of the Thompson school, but his verdict on his former rival is always fair, never degrading. The story of expert dispute over the meaning of the glyphs, however, takes up only about half of the book - after all, factional fighting is a frequently observed phenomenon in all fields of academia. The other half is dedicated to the history of discoveries that took place once the Knorosov approach had been accepted as the signpost to follow. Here, Mr Coe excels in depicting the various people who got hooked on the Maya glyphs and who dedicated their working life to the continuing decipherment of the Maya script. All in all, "Breaking the Maya Code" proved to be a delightful read and, this being the mark of every good book, it made me want to read more on the subject. I am now in the mood to pick up a book on how to read Maya glyphs or to have a closer look at one of the four codices, the surviving Maya books. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: A lively guide to the decipherment of Mayan writing
Review: Michael Coe has been involved with Mayan writing for fifty years. The story he tells in "Breaking the Maya Code" involves his friends, his colleagues, and--in a couple of cases--his academic foes. The story is a scientific one, but Coe provides a look at the human history too. Mayan writing has only really started to give up its secrets in the last twenty five years. Coe's primary thesis (for which he makes a convincing case) is that there are two reason it took so long: first, there was no large, widely available corpus of Mayan writing for epigraphers to work on; second, there was a widely held belief among Mayanists that the writing did not represent spoken language, but instead represented "not Maya words or construction, but universal ideas". He spends some time on the story of Champollion's decipherment of Egyptian writing in the early nineteenth century, in order to be able to draw parallels with the state of play in Mayanist studies. Then he moves on through the history of the subject, with short biographies of many of the key academic figures, bringing the story up to 1992. There's a short postscript for the 1999 edition. Coe makes no bones about the academic in-fighting. A couple of the reviews below object to his tone: he is very clear about who he thinks obstructed the field (Eric Thompson, for example), and who he thinks was critical to the successess (Yuri Knorosov). His comments about Thompson, while sometimes affectionate, attribute much of the delay in understanding Mayan writing to the deadening effect of Thompson's influence. Thompson, a well-respected and very influential Mayanist, believed that the glyphs had no relationship to any spoken Mayan language, and poured scorn (Coe quotes some reviews) on those who disagreed. In the end, I think Coe gets the balance about right. There really is in-fighting in academe, and what he shows of it doesn't obscure the excitement of the decipherment. Coe tells a whole story: it's his personal view, but it's a view from the inside. He's enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and he writes well. Recommended.
|
