This volume is the latest in Penn State University Press's innovative series of translations of primary source volumes on colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America. Under the intellectual guidance of Matthew Restall, the Latin American Originals series has become an exciting meeting ground for historians, anthropologists and literary scholars to explore issues of translatability and cultural exchange as they present accessible English editions of little known texts. Christensen's volume continues the high standard of the previous works in the series. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Roman Catholic missionaries created religious texts in Nahuatl and Maya languages to evangelise the native peoples more effectively. In Translated Christianities, Christensen provides the first English translations of a variety of Nahuatl and Maya religious texts, along with the background and an analysis of each text chosen. With sophistication, he explains the challenges faced by missionaries when they attempted to translate European concepts into native languages and cultures that had no equivalents. The Nahuatl and Maya texts presented in this volume include saint's tales, baptismal tracts, catechisms and confessional manuals, all adapted to their native audiences. For example, several of the Mexican baptismal texts were composed according to the Nahuatl form of highly metaphorical rhetoric called huehuetlatolli, or ‘speech of the elders’; Christensen's sensitive translation gives readers an example of how this pre-Columbian rhetoric sounded in the colonial Christian context. The book also provides the first translation and analysis of a Methodist catechism written in Yucatec Maya (1865), comparing it to the Roman Catholic catechisms of the previous centuries. While these Nahuatl and Maya texts were composed to help Christianise and ensure the piety of indigenous peoples in central Mexico and the Yucatan, they demonstrate how such efforts led to the development of local Christianities throughout the region. Christensen's skill in locating, analysing and translating these diverse primary sources is an illuminating piece of historical detective work. Readable and erudite, Translating Christianities will be invaluable to scholars and students in history, anthropology, literature and culture studies.