Probably one of my favorite non fiction reads of all time

books:


	• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Charles C. Mann Vintage, 2006 - 541 pages average customer review:based on 194 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Probably one of my favorite non fiction reads of all time

I will keep this brief and to the point. I read a lot of non-fiction. In fact, one of the reasons I cannot bring myself to read another novel is THIS BOOK. I have gotten more from Mann's 1491 than any other I have read over the last five years--maybe more. I recommend that prospective college/high school students read this and learn.

Fascinating and informative

In a very readable way, author Charles C. Mann re-orients our thinking about the Pre-Columbian world throughout its history and at the moment it dramatically changed in 1492.

Mann synthesizes what we have learned through advances in archaeological methods and techniques over the last 30 years to call into question how and when the native population arrived in the Western Hemisphere, how many lived here, and the innovative ways the various populations adapted their divergent environments to suit cultures that were in many ways rivals to the world of Europe at the same time.

What I enjoyed most was Mann's ability to show how scientific thinking and knowledge have changed, where it still disagrees and why, and what it does and does not know, particularly on such questions as how many people lived in North and South America when Columbus arrived, how many died in the first huge wave of diseases the Europeans brought with them, where corn came from, and how the indigenous people lived in the Amazon.

I wish the book had spent additional time in North America, although the South American information was fascinating. And I would have also liked the book to have included a time line so I could have seen all the cultures he explored organized chronologically next to a single map showing their geographic relationship and communication routes.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed reading this book and recommend it highly.

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Overly Ambitious

"1491" is a journalist's look at pre-Columbian America. It is an overly ambitious, oftentimes confusing assortment of fact, theory, archaeology, geography, genetics, anthropology, ethnography and almost every other science and pseudoscience that can be applied to the study of ancient and recent native Americans.

In my opinion, the author would have been far better off to have thoroughly expored a couple of themes rather than to have hop-scotched over the Americas both temporally and geographically. Even the title--1491--is misleading because the author spends much time discussing European contacts with the natives. He also wastes time highlighting the personal disputes between various scholars.

I would have much preferred an in-depth discussion of 1491 populations in various parts of the continents with evidence of the impact of European diseases. To be sure, the author discusses this subject but, bored or running out of material, he quickly skips to other, only tangentially related matters.

This is really too bad because the author has gone to a great deal of work and study to prepare his work.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of America

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Book Review

In this beautifully written book Charles C. Mann recollects his journey to old tribal communties in what is now America. This book holds many facts that are amazing and your idea of what the US was like before Columbus will change drastically. Charles Mann tells lost stories of lies and betrayal between the Indians and the early explorers who landed on the coast of America. Many assumptions about what the Indians were like are completely contradicted in this book, although bold at time all of the facts are true and seem to line up perfectly. Although lacking cities of gold the Americas did have sophisticated technology in some tribes, even more ahead than their un familiar rivals in Europe. Early interactions between the first people to land on the United States are extordanary and just imagine how complicated it was with almost no communication possible. These early trades were great but also left some American Indian tribes in ruins. 1491 Changed everything, and it will change you.

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Good, but not convincing

One serious problem with this book is that the author is a journalist, not an archaeologist or historian. After getting past this author's distracting writing style, the reader must tread carefully to separate fact from speculation, realism from romanticism. But most readers are neither archaeologist nor historian and must therefore be wary of being led too far afield by some of the romantic notions presented here, such as the Indian (or Native American) influence on the US Constitution and their wholesale revamping of the Amazon ecosystem. The book is captivating as long as the author is discussing historical and archaeological aspects of particular civilizations. But these peter out about 3/4 way thru the book and give way to ecological speculations. This is fine as long as the reader has some kind of background to deal with this material. Many do not. Therefore there is a misleading element in this book that could benefit from editing in future editions. And of course, there is not a lot of pre-1491 history presented here, as the author admits. Most such "history" is derived from archaeology. And that's ok, as long as you understand where it's coming from.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. From the astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which had running water, immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city, to the Mexican corn that was so carefully created in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man?s first feat of genetic engineering, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

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