Elizabeth Newsome’s Trees of Paradise and Pillars of the World: The Serial Stela Cycle of “18-Rabbit-God K,” King of Copan is a monographic treatment of stela sculpture commissioned by one Classic Maya king, nicknamed “18 Rabbit,” ruler of Copan, Honduras, between A.D. 695 and 738. This fact is extremely telling about the current state of knowledge of the ancient Maya. Scholarship in this field has become so detailed that book-length biographies of individual kings, including the history of their art patronage, are now possible. Indeed, a session at the 2003 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held in Milwaukee, concerned the life of a single Maya king, Janaab Pakal of Palenque, and doubtless its papers will be published as an edited volume. In terms of artistic legacy, only Chan Muwan of Bonampak has been the subject of monographic scrutiny, in Mary Ellen Miller’s The Murals of Bonampak (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Newsome is the first to publish a major book on a corpus of sculpture commissioned by a single Maya king, spanning several decades of his life. Other such books are looming on the horizon, but only hers can claim pioneering status. Newsome has written about true masterpieces...