What We Are Reading Today: ‘Vital Signs’ by Stephen Houston

For two millennia, the ancestral Maya of Mexico and Central America created a rich legacy of image and text. “Vital Signs” explains how this graphic system worked, shedding new light on its design, intent, and authorship. One of the few peoples of the ancient world with hieroglyphic writing, the Maya developed an innovative form of visual representation in which written signs, known as “glyphs,” t