For more than two thousand years, the Maya ruled the jungles and highlands of Central America. They built soaring pyramids, mapped the heavens with a sacred calendar, and created one of the most intricate writing systems on Earth. For centuries their civilization was shrouded in mystery, dismissed as peaceful stargazers who somehow vanished into ruin. But when scholars finally cracked the code of their hieroglyphs, the Maya emerged as something far more thrilling: builders of vast empires, players in century-long wars, visionaries, conquerors, and tragic heroes.

The Sun, Stones, and the Cross tells this epic story. Historian Jerome Nash takes readers on a gripping journey from the earliest days of maize and cacao farming to the rise of the first Maya superpower at El Mirador. From there, the narrative plunges into the Classic Period—the golden age of the “speaking stones.” Here, mighty kingdoms clashed in a struggle worthy of Rome and Carthage: Tikal versus Calakmul, the Jaguar kings against the Serpent lords. Their world comes alive through unforgettable figures: Pakal the Great of Palenque, the warrior-queen Lady K’abel, the doomed artist-king 18 Rabbit, and the avenger Jasaw Chan K’awiil I, who turned the tide of history in a single battle.

Then come the cataclysms: the mysterious Classic Collapse, now linked to centuries of devastating droughts, and the violent arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Told through the starkly different voices of ruthless captains and Maya scribes, the conquest story is one of massacre, betrayal, and astonishing resistance. Against all odds, the last Maya citadel held out until 1697.

Sweeping yet intimate, Nash’s history is alive with landscapes, legends, and the living spirit of the Maya. This is the definitive account for a new generation—a lost world rediscovered.