The year is 1519, the place is Mexico City, or TenochtitlÔen, the capital of the Aztec empire, and the tale of the conquest of New Spain is profoundly disturbing. Ross's excellent retelling makes use of recent revisionist histories of this event, focusing on the ambivalent but fascinating figure of Don̳a Marina, the translator and mistress of the conquistador CortÔes and the epitome of treachery in Mexican tradition. Although the settings are magnificent, the main characters are simple to the point of being banal. Yet their selfish, picayune motivations, which set in motion a terrible train of events, are probably closer to how history actually works than any theory of "great men" or ideas.