1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (CD-Audio)

from lorax

Comparisons of this book to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel are inevitable, and Mann certainly acknowledges Diamond's work. They aren't really that similar other than being something markedly different from the "Europeans with their technological superiority colonize the backward Americas"...

from sergerca

An absolute eye-opener. Especially from someone like me who reflexively thinks from an American point of view. When I think "Indian" I think Crazy Horse and Tecumseh. It's as if the Aztecs and Inca are not even in the same category as the Sioux and Shawnee. No doubt, I'll take western civilizatio...

from addunn3

The author summarizes research on what the Americas were like before Columbus bumped into it. One of the best reads I have encountered - especially since much of the original material had to have been rather academic. Easy to understand, with what appears to be a pretty fair shake to countering v...

from tuckerresearch

An excellent accounting of Indian life in North and South America in the centuries before Columbus (and a bit afterward). The gist is that the natives were far more numerous, far more advanced, and far more willing to change their environment in significant ways. One thing I must always run up ag...

from publiusdb

I'll be the first to admit that my interests in the historical have generally been Eurocentric, especially the Roman Republic and Empire. Recently, though, I found reason to pick up Charles C. Mann's "1491," and I have had a hard time putting it down since.The children's nursery rhyme reminds us ...