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Paperback The Search for the Codex Cardona Book
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ISBN: 0822346141

ISBN13: 9780822346142

The Search for the Codex Cardona

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Format: Paperback

Condition: Very Good

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Book Overview

In The Search for the Codex Cardona, Arnold J. Bauer tells the story of his experiences on the trail of a cultural treasure, a Mexican "painted book" that first came into public view at Sotheby's auction house in London in 1982, nearly four hundred years after it was presumably made by Mexican artists and scribes. On folios of amate paper, the Codex includes two oversized maps and 300 painted illustrations accompanied by text in sixteenth-century paleography. The Codex relates the trajectory of the Nahua people to the founding of the capital of Tenochtitl n and then focuses on the consequences of the Spanish conquest up to the 1550s. If authentic, the Codex Cardona is an invaluable record of early Mexico. Yet there is no clear evidence of its origin, what happened to it after 1560, or even where it is today, after its last known appearance at Christie's auction house in New York in 1998.

Bauer first saw the Codex Cardona in 1985 in the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, where scholars from Stanford and the University of California were attempting to establish its authenticity. Allowed to gently lift a few pages of this ancient treasure, Bauer was hooked. By 1986, the Codex had again disappeared from public view. Bauer's curiosity about the Codex and its whereabouts led him down many forking paths-from California to Seville and Mexico City, to the Firestone Library in Princeton, to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Christie's in New York-and it brought him in contact with an international cast of curators, agents, charlatans, and erudite book dealers. The Search for the Codex Cardona is a mystery that touches on issues of cultural patrimony, the workings of the rare books and manuscripts trade, the uncertainty of archives and evidence, and the ephemerality of the past and its remains.

Related Subjects

16th Century Antiques & Collectibles Crafts & Hobbies History Modern (16th-21st Centuries)

Customer Reviews

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enthralling

Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 14 years ago
This true story reads like the very best mystery fiction. Bauer is a stunning writer, with the subtlest characterizations of the people who show up in his quest and a sense of timing that is delicious. The book has an exquisite ending. It is an international romp, suspenseful and colorful, and in another sense, a travelogue through Mexico, its upper crust, its lower depths. A page turner. Priscilla High

Pretty Good Book

Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 14 years ago
Very enjoyable read. Do be careful of the "dream" scene in Chapter 17. Though the author and his friend have lapsed into fantasies about the outcome before, there was always a warning of sorts. Chapter 17 purports to have actually have found The Cordona. Only after reading what one thinks is fact does the author inform us -oops another fantasy! If you start skimming this book you will miss this. This is not a suitable device for non-fiction---perhaps just filler.

I Wish All Academics Wrote This Well . . .

Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
Professor Bauer's book is one of the most fascinating historical works I've read recently. When I first heard Dr. Bauer on NPR's THE STORY, I knew THE SEARCH FOR THE CODEX CARDONA would be a book I couldn't get my hands on fast enough. Finally published by Duke UP, I received my copy this week after having placed my order a couple months ago. Reading Bauer's account makes me feel like I'm back in Dr. Ott's Latin American History course at UNA. I recommend enthusiastically THE SEARCH FOR THE CODEX CARDONA. The book is a smart mixture of history, mystery, and the rare book trade. Additionally, it's the sole existing work on the Cardona -- a unique treatment of the subject!
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