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Books for

Enrich your travels with reading! Here's a hand-picked list prepared for your journey in conjunction with the book experts at Longitude.

Essential Reading

Item EXCAM120. Buy these 4 items as a set for $64 including shipping, 15% off the retail price.
With free shipping on anything else you order.

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Rough Guide Guatemala

Rough Guide Guatemala

by Rough Guide

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 511 PAGES

This comprehensive guide features good cultural information and the best overview of where to go and what to do throughout the country. It's got consistently more -- and more accurate -- information on markets, towns and excursions than the competition. With chapters on Copan and the Honduran Bay Islands. (CAM89, $21.99)

Nicaragua in Focus, A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture

Nicaragua in Focus, A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture

by Hazel Plunkett

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2002
  • PAPER
  • 100 PAGES

Essential reading for Nicaragua, this compact, illustrated travel guide focuses on politics, economy, history and culture. It's especially strong on the difficult history of relations with the U.S. but also includes a good short summary of traditional culture and history from colonial times to the present. (CAM71, $12.95)

Maya Art and Architecture

Maya Art and Architecture

by Mary Ellen Miller

  • ART & ARCHITECTURE
  • 1999
  • PAPER
  • 240 PAGES

An illustrated overview of the art and architecture of the Maya, making use of the latest discoveries at Tikal, Copan and Palenque to demonstrate the range of Maya artistic influence. With 200 illustrations, 50 in color, including site plans, maps, strikingly rendered reconstructions and color photographs of key temples and buildings. (MYA20, $19.95)

Central America Map

Central America Map

by ITMB

  • 2008
  • MAP

A detailed map of the Central American isthmus at a scale of 1:1,100,000. (CAM20, $12.95)

 
Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish

Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish


by Joseph Keenan

  • LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS
  • 1994
  • PAPER
  • 215 PAGES

Idioms, common mistakes in word usage, and other helpful advice on tackling spoken Spanish. You'll need some foundation to take full advantage of this book -- but even a complete novice will appreciate the author's playful sense of humor. (CAM06, $19.95)

Moon Handbook Nicaragua

Moon Handbook Nicaragua


by Josh Berman

  • GUIDEBOOK
  • 2010
  • PAPER
  • 475 PAGES

A handy, practical guide to Nicaragua, this book is a good resource for planning a trip, featuring extensive, up-to-date listings, maps, volcano hikes, and other background information. (CAM110, $19.95)

A Brief History of Central America

A Brief History of Central America


by Hector Perez-Brignoll

  • HISTORY
  • 1989
  • PAPER
  • 223 PAGES

A good overview of the region's economic, political and social history through the 1980s by a professor at the University of Costa Rica. Well-written, informative and concise. (CAM49, $25.95)

Bitter Fruit, The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

Bitter Fruit, The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala


by Stephen Schlesinger | Stephen Kinzer

  • HISTORY
  • 2005
  • PAPER
  • 331 PAGES

A foreign policy classic first published in 1982, brilliantly written and devastating in its implications. Schlesinger and Kinzer provide a dramatic account of the CIA-backed overthrow of Guatemala's democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. (CAM82, $22.95)

Forgotten Continent

Forgotten Continent


by Michael Reid

  • HISTORY
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 400 PAGES

Economist editor Reid draws on his years in the cities, presidential palaces and shantytowns of Central and South America in this portrait of a region rich in oil, farmland and culture, and its prospects in the face of globalization. (SAM123, $22.00)

Guatemala in Focus, A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture

Guatemala in Focus, A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture


by Trisha O'Kane

  • HISTORY
  • 2000
  • PAPER
  • 94 PAGES

This slim guide focuses on the history of Guatemala, its cultural heritage and current political, environmental and economic challenges. An excellent synopsis from an unabashedly left-leaning perspective. We also carry Belize in Focus. (Item BLZ13) (GML04, $12.95)

Unfinished Conquest, The Guatemalan Tragedy


by Daniel Chauche | Victor Perera

  • HISTORY
  • 1993
  • PAPER
  • 297 PAGES

An oral history of devastating 30-year civil war; Perera interviewed hundreds of people for this astonishing book, not only the resilient Maya but also landowners, government officials, military personnel and clergy. (CAM83, $31.95)

An Album of Maya Architecture

An Album of Maya Architecture


by Tatiana Proskouriakoff

  • ARCHAEOLOGY
  • 2003
  • PAPER
  • 164 PAGES

Scholar, artist and architect Proskouriakoff presents breathtaking artistic reconstructions of what Maya cities may have looked like in their heyday in this classic work, first published in 1946. (MYA06, $19.95)

Breaking the Maya Code

Breaking the Maya Code


by Michael Coe

  • ARCHAEOLOGY
  • 1999
  • PAPER
  • 304 PAGES

Mayan hieroglyphs were a linguistic puzzle until the 1952 breakthrough translation of a Mayan bark-paper text, as Coe explains in this history. The book also includes an extensive discussion of Maya studies and political activism in the wake of the linguistic discovery. (MYA30, $19.95)

The Maya

The Maya


by Michael Coe

  • ARCHAEOLOGY
  • 2011
  • PAPER
  • 280 PAGES

The eighth edition of Coe's clear, concise and authoritative, illustrated survey of the Maya. (MYA10, $26.95)

Guatemalan Journey

Guatemalan Journey


by Stephen Connely Benz

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 1996
  • PAPER
  • 212 PAGES

Opening with a long chapter on life in Guatemala City, Benz's memoir moves on to the remote highlands and other little-visited regions. An excellent account of Guatemala's political history, traditions, and indigenous cultures. (GML03, $19.95)

The Jaguar Smile, A Nicaraguan Journey

The Jaguar Smile, A Nicaraguan Journey


by Salman Rushdie

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2008
  • PAPER
  • 160 PAGES

Rushdie's account of visit to the country at the height of the Contra war goes underneath the headlines. It's a cultural portrait -- simple, straightforward and "Written with a novelist's eye for irony," wrote the "New York Times." (CAM43, $14.00)

Time Among the Maya, Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico

Time Among the Maya, Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico


by Ronald Wright

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2000
  • PAPER
  • 464 PAGES

Wright combines journalism, archaeology and an ear for dialogue in this engaging account of travels among the contemporary Maya. (CAM84, $16.00)

Travelers' Tales Central America

Travelers' Tales Central America


by Larry Habegger | Natanya Pearlman

  • ANTHOLOGY
  • 2001
  • PAPER
  • 277 PAGES

Organized thematically with contributions set in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, this collection of eyewitness reports includes Joan Didion, P.J. O'Rourke and Paul Theroux. (CAM96, $17.95)

Antigua and My Life Before


by Marcela Serrano | Margaret Sayers Peden

  • LITERATURE
  • 2000
  • PAPER
  • 368 PAGES

Set in Santiago, Chile, and the Guatemalan city of Antigua, this is the story of two women --- one a famous singer, the other an artist/architect -- and a tragic shooting that sparks off memories of their friendship. (CRB121, $14.00)

Popol Vuh, The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life

Popol Vuh, The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life


by Dennis Tedlock

  • LITERATURE
  • 1996
  • PAPER
  • 388 PAGES

The definitive, unabridged collection of creation myths and stories of the Quiche people, fundamental to understanding the worldview of the highland Maya. (MYA14, $16.99)

Spirits of the Jaguar

Spirits of the Jaguar


by BBC

  • NATURAL HISTORY
  • 2006
  • DVD

A four-part BBC television series, this documentary presents the land, wildlife and cultures of Central America in living color. (CAM59, $19.98)

Tropical Nature

Tropical Nature


by Adrian Forsyth | Ken Miyata

  • NATURAL HISTORY
  • 1984
  • PAPER
  • 248 PAGES
  • BEST SELLER
  • FAVORITE

A lucid portrait of the tropics as seen by two uncommonly observant and thoughtful field biologists. Its 17 marvelous essays introduce the habitats, ecology, plants and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. (GPS13, $16.00)

A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America & Southeast Mexico

A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America & Southeast Mexico


by Fiona Reid

  • FIELD GUIDE
  • 2009
  • PAPER
  • 384 PAGES

This second edition of Fiona Reid's wonderfully detailed and comprehensive field guide to the mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico features 59 vivid full-color illustrations. Reid painted most of the creatures in the field, a formidable challenge and -- given the quality of the results -- well worth her while. With parks, and protected areas, habitats, range maps, tracks and natural history. (CAM60, $59.95)

A Guide to the Birds of Panama with Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras

A Guide to the Birds of Panama with Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras


by Robert Ridgely | J.A. Gwynne

  • FIELD GUIDE
  • 1992
  • PAPER
  • 534 PAGES

This comprehensive field guide, noteworthy for its beautiful color plates, covers additional species found in Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica. (CAM07, $55.00)

Animals and Plants of the Ancient Maya, A Guide


by Victoria Schlesinger

  • FIELD GUIDE
  • 2002
  • PAPER
  • 400 PAGES

A comprehensive guide to the natural and cultural history of 100 plants and animals of the Maya world, primarily those from the lowland tropical forest of Central America but also including savanna, mangrove and coral reef habitats. (MYA29, $29.95)

Neotropical Rainforest Mammals, A Field Guide

Neotropical Rainforest Mammals, A Field Guide


by L.H. Emmons

  • FIELD GUIDE
  • 1997
  • PAPER
  • 298 PAGES

Compact enough to slip into your daypack, this field guide to the mammals of the New World tropics features 29 color plates of more than 200 species. (GPS12, $42.50)

More Recommendations

Here are some other groups of books that might be of interest

Longitude provides recommended reading for travelers in partnership with the leading tour operators and travel programs for hundreds of destinations worldwide. We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.