The Ancient Maya by MORLEY, Sylvanus Griswold - 1958

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958. Hardcover. Revised by George W. Brainerd. Small 4to. Tan cloth with green lettering, pictorial price-clipped dust jacket. x, 507pp. Frontispiece, numerous illustrations, line drawings, floor plans, map endpapers. Near fine/very good. Mild jacket edgewear. Tight and attractive second printing of the revised third edition of this 1946 study -- with a nice association: Inner flyleaf bears a large purple inkstamped presentation stamp: "Obsequiado por el Presidente / YDIGORAS FUENTES / a '[Mr. --] / [Adlai E. Stevenson] / Guatemala, [16] de [Feb.] 196[0]." (Bracketed portions accomplished in black ink.) Adlai E. Stevenson III (1900-65), Illinois governor and two-time presidential candidate, would become U,.S. ambassador to the U.N. the following year, and apparently Fuentes sent him this and other books about his country well in advance of that for some reason. Interestingly, it was in Guatemala that the American-led troops involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion of April, 1961, were trained and it was from there and Nicaragua that they launched their attack. In June 1961 Stevenson (who'd been kept in the dark about the CIA's Bay of Pigs involve-ment) toured 10 South American capital cities in 18 days to sound government leaders out about JFK's "Alliance for Progress" cooperative program and to sound the alarm about the spread of communism in the western hemisphere. A great association copy from the Guatemalan president (1895-1982) remembered for his close ties to the U.S.