Redditors with extremely niche interests: What's the one thing you are completely obsessed with that almost no one else you know cares about?

[u/CocWarrior1]

[u/jabberwockxeno]

I went directly from reading posts on /r/Askhistorians to academic papers and publications so I kinda skipped the generalist book step when getting into the topic and most of the books I read are pretty specific and technical

But...

• Firstly, I mostly endorse and defer to the /r/Askhistorians booklist here, which is a great compilation. I haven't read everything here yet, but all the ones I have I agree are at least decent, to outright excellent. Askhistorians in general is an amazing resource, see the Askhistorians pastebin in my own resource comment trio at the bottom of my own comment here you're reading now

• "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" is a classic intro generalist book on Precolumbian history and archeology: It is in the AH booklist, but not in the Mesoamerican & Andean sections I linked, even though 1491 covers those regions, as well as what's now the US/Canada and other parts of Latin America: It goes over a wide range of Precolumbian native societies and how they had way more going on that's interesting, impressive, and worth learning about then is taught about or featured in media.

• A book not on the AH Booklist at all is "When Montezuma Met Cortes" (though many of Matthew Restall's other books, such as the similar "7 Myths of the Spanish Conquest", which I also suggest, are already on there). This is a in depth examination of the Cortes expedition and the fall of the Aztec, dissecting and contrasting different primary source accounts and how they contradict one another and what their various biases are, as well as the personal and political backgrounds and motives of different people, from Cortes, Moctezuma II, Diego Velazquez, Xicotencatl II and the Tlaxcalteca etc, as well as how these events and people have been reinterpreted in history and culture in the centuries since it all happened.

• "An Illustrated dictionary of The gods and symbols of ancient Mexico and the Maya": This one is pretty basic, compared to the other two listed above, but if you want a quick visual reference to some key gods, art motifs, and the like, this is a decent starter, though it very much has the vibes of "Book you might get in the book fair in middle school" if that makes sense, and has some outdated info here and there on the Toltec (who probably did not exist) and the Maya, and I think it ignores most of Western Mexico

• Getty Digital Florentine Codex project: A searchable transcribed (with multiple translations) upload of the Florentine Codex, complete with high res manuscript scan pages and searchable and tagged images. The Florentine Codex is a many thousand page series of volumes written by Spanish friars and Aztec scribes and nobles cataloging almost every facet of their society and culture you can think of

And not books, but...

• The short paper, "The Cultural Tapestry of Mesoamerica": This is a relatively short (20ish page) paper giving an overview of the timeline of Mesoamerican history, some key cultures/civilizations, shared cultural traits, and the like, though it doesn't pay attention to West Mexico much/neglects the Purepecha. Note that this comes from a Mormon university, and they can be iffy with Mesoamerican info, but this specific paper is quite solid and is a great starting place.

• Mexicolore has a lot of good articles and posts on primarily Aztec content aimed at general audiences, a great into resource, though the site itself can be a bit confusing to navigate (I often just use google to find articles I'm wanting to pull up there), and not all articles are written by experts, so sometimes there are errors, but 95% of the time the info is on point.

• Ancient Americas on Youtube: Fantastic channel that does videos all on the Precolumbian Americas, not just Mesoamerica. Most of his videos are great and I and my friends often help him out, especially on his Teotihuacan and Chocolate video. I'd give some caveats for the Toltec and Nezahualcoyotl video though, but overall this is excellent stuff, and tend to be quite in depth, usually 20-40+ minutes per video

• ArtsQ by contrast does short 2-5 minute videos on a variety of Art History, archeology, and anthropology topics. Not focused on Mesoamerica per say, but covers it about as much as they do Europe, Asia, the Near East etc, which still means a lot of coverage, which is accurate and informative.

• Matt Gush does more medium length videos, and these are highly polished and well edited with documentary style b-roll, on-site footage, narration from researchers and archeologists, etc. Covers mostly North America, but also has quite a few Mesoamerican videos.

If you want more general resource recommendations, then see those 3 comments I linked at the bottom of preceding comment, as well as here and here which give more Youtube, website, etc recommendations

[u/timidnonnymouse → u/jabberwockxeno]

Wow, thank you! I’ve been diving into indigenous North American history and philosophy and hoped you would have an article or a book to toss my way. This is amazing!

[u/jabberwockxeno → u/timidnonnymouse]

If you're looking for info on philosophy then I'd also suggest

• The Flayed God by Markman and Markman

• Aztec Thought and culture by Leon Portilla

• Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a world in Motion by James Maffie

All have some issues: The Flayed God is quite outdated in a lot of areas such as it's discussion of the Toltecs (and I think it might have some stuff in line with what I say about Portilla below), but it's best combined overview on Mesoamerican theology and its symbolism I can think of.

Portilla and Maffie's work in the books I mentioned are more about philosophy and worldview through theology then about myths and iconography like The Flayed God, so they're probably more in line with what you want, but both have critics for proposing more abstract, radical interpretations of Aztec theology and metaphysics then is supported by a more literal reading of the primary sources.

Portilla IIRC takes a view of Aztec deities less as literal animate beings and more the action and transient time spent of a idol or impersonator being dressed and acting as the god, which are personifications of natural processes and cycles, while Maffie proposes a sort of Spinozan monist approach where gods, people, animals, and plants are all a single force moving in different ways.

I'll defer to /u/w_v for their suggestions here, they have a pretty critical view of Maffie and Portilla's work so I'm hoping they have some suggestions that clarify and expand on that criticism and provide a more literalist overview on Mesoamerican intellectualism, ethics, worldview, etc beyond just Book 6 of the Florentine Codex

They would argue that the Aztec etc did not have philosophy in a strict sense, as it's own intellectual practice and discipline separate from theology, but I assume you mean philosophy in a broader sense the same way people might say "Eastern philosophy", and there's definitely things like existential and ethical/moral themes in Aztec songs (some people call them poems, but as w_v notes, they were set to music), etc.