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In May 1975, Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, noted scholar of the Mayan language and culture, was meeting with a group of graduate students; suddenly he looked at his watch and said: "In a few minutes I must go to the dictionary."Only then did I become aware of a project that, after six years of intensive work, would result in one of the most valuable contributions to the field of Mayan linguistics in the twentieth century. Each weekday at four p.m., a group of highly talented specialists met in a small building in Mérida to labor on the dictionary. The team worked with a sense of dedication and purpose, and those of us fortunate enough to visit the project became filled with a feeling of excitement. The resulting publication, issued in January 1980, was the Diccionario Maya Cordemex: Maya-Español, Español-Maya (Mérida, Yucatán: Ediciones Cordemex, 1980). It is not the first dictionary of the Mayan language, but is in many ways the culmination of all previous studies relating to the subject.

The first reference work of its kind, this volume on the United States-Mexican War encompasses the decade of the 1840s, focusing on the war years of 1846-1848. More than a dozen maps were drawn for this book, some of which depict major regions and localities over which armies of both nations moved great distances to position for battle, and others that depict major battlefields from the first engagement to the last

This work describes the profound changes to Yucatán's society and economy following the 1982 debt crisis that prostrated Mexico's economy. The editors have assembled contributions from seasoned "Yucatecologists"-historians, geographers, cultural students, and an economist-to chart the accelerated change in Yucatán from a monocrop economy to a full beneficiary and victim of rampant globalization.

Yucatan has been called "a world apart"-cut off from the rest of Mexico by geography and culture. Yet, despite its peripheral location, the region experienced substantial change in the decades after independence. As elsewhere in Mexico, apostles of modernization introduced policies intended to remold Yucatan in the image of the advanced nations of the day. Indeed, modernizing change began in the late colonial era and continued throughout the 19th century as traditional patterns of land tenure were altered and efforts were made to divest the Catholic Church of its wealth and political and intellectual influence. Some changes, however, produced fierce resistance from both elites and humbler Yucatecans and modernizers were frequently forced to retreat or at least reach accommodation with their foes. Covering topics from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, the essays in this collection illuminate both the processes of change and the negative reactions that they frequently elicited. The diversity of disciplines covered by this volume-history, anthropology, sociology, economics-illuminates at least three overriding challenges for study of the peninsula today. One is politics after the decline of the Institutional Revolutionary Party: What are the important institutions, practices, and discourses of politics in a post-postrevolutionary era? A second trend is the scholarly demystification of the Maya: Anthropologists have shown the difficulties of applying monolithic terms like Maya in a society where ethnic relations are often situational and ethnic boundaries are fluid. And a third consideration: researchers are only now beginning to grapple with the region's transition to a post-henequen economy based on tourism, migration, and the assembly plants known as maquiladoras. Challenges from agribusiness and industry will no doubt continue to