"This innovative work attempts to piece together the cultural biography
of Mesoamerica's precolonial codices. Today less than twenty extant
manuscripts are all that remains of the Mesoamerican book-making
tradition. These pictographic and hieroglyphic texts have often been
studied for their content, but in doing so their nature as physical
objects faded into the background. By tracing the paths these books have
followed over the past five hundred years, this study acquaints the
reader with their production, use and re-use, destruction, rediscovery
and reinvention. Even today, in fact, these books continue to add new
chapters to their biography. That is, thanks to the most cutting-edge
technology currently available, it has now been possible to uncover a
completely new text from inside one of these precious and fragile
manuscripts."