Frances F. Berdan is Professor Emerita of the Department of Anthropology of California State University, San Bernardino. She won the Outstanding Professor Award for the California State University system in 1982–83. She is author or editor of twelve books, including The Aztecs of Central Mexico (2nd edition, 2005), The Codex Mendoza (co-authored, 1992), Aztec Imperial Strategies (co-authored, 1996) and The Postclassic Mesoamerican World (co-edited, 2003). Her articles have been published in Scientific American, American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, Ancient Mesoamerica, and Arqueología Mexicana.

• Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Discovering, uncovering, and interpreting the Aztec world; 2. The Aztecs as Mesoamericans; Part II. Aztec Society and Culture: 3. Living on the land; 4. Craft specialization, commerce, and trade; 5. City-states and imperial rule; 6. Living as an Aztec: social status and daily life; 7. Religion, science, and the arts; 8. The Aztec world: an integrated view.

'Anthropologist Frances Berdan draws on her decades of ethnohistoric research that she combines with the latest findings from archaeology to offer a new authoritative account of the Aztecs and how the Mexica came to dominate the largest pre-Hispanic empire in Mesoamerica.' Deborah L. Nichols, Dartmouth College