1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
December 18th, 2006
by Charles C. Mann
A break-neck, intellectual joy ride very much in the spirit of Guns, Germs, and Steel (and significantly more fun then Collapse), I found it enthralling, and a page turner.
To his credit Mann manages to represent multiple confliciting views (even wrong ones alas!) in a balanced nuanced manner (guarenteed to drive experts crazy), delicate and fraught given how political charged the study of history in the Americas is.
These grand generalist histories, with millenial sweep fill the void of “just so” stories for the 21st century, explaing the big bad world in an engaging, entertaining way. Pure candy if you’re into that kind of thing.
2 Comments
February 23rd, 2007 at 4:59 pm
I liekd the thoughts in your review… it is a great book, and now I am being annoyed by constant wrong peices of information people say about the pre-columbian Americas, especially when they say that they weren’t as advanced. I wrote a whole review at my own blog. Click here and tell me what you think; I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Kris
July 18th, 2007 at 9:43 am
[...] civilizatoin and “place making”. (including 1491, Polian, Diamond, and Derrick Jensen) 0. (Aside, history, books, civilization, placemaking) [...]