The Maya of Central America have been called the Greeks of the New World. In the first millennium ad, they created the most intellectually and artistically advanced civilization of the Americas. Throughout the ensuing centuries, as neighbouring empires fell in warfare and to the Spanish invasion, the Maya endured, shaken but never destroyed.

In Time Among the Maya, Ronald Wright's journey takes him not only to the lands of the ancient Maya, but also among the five million people who speak Mayan languages and preserve a Mayan identity today. His travels begin in tiny Belize, exploring the jungles and mountains of Guatemala, bloodstained by civil war, and end in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Embracing history, politics, anthropology, and literature, this book is both a fascinating travel memoir and the study of a civilization.