This is the first comprehensive book on Aztec art: eleven chapters illustrated with seventy-five superb color plates and hundreds of photographs, supplemented by maps and diagrams. Temple architecture, majestic stone sculpture carved without metal tools, featherwork and turquoise mosaic, painted books, and sculptures in terra cotta and rare stones - all are here.

Pasztory has placed these major works of Pre-Columbian art in a historical context, relating them to the reigns of individual rulers, events in Aztec history, and the needs of different social groups from the elite to the farmer. She focuses on the little-known aspects of the aesthetics, poetry and humanity of the Aztecs.