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About This Book
ISBN13: 9781400032051 |
Powells.com Staff Pick
Charles C. Mann has pulled off an impressive feat — a scholarly, thorough
work of history that's almost compulsively readable. In 1491, he summarizes and examines the last thirty years of research into the
pre-Columbian Americas, and
comes to some startling and exciting conclusions. Mann is an enthusiastic and
capable guide, and 1491 is satisfyingly rich with description, anecdote,
and example.
Recommended by Jill, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
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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Synopsis:
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface
INTRODUCTION / Holmberg’s Mistake
1. A View from Above
PART ONE / Numbers from Nowhere?
2. Why Billington Survived
3. In the Land of Four Quarters
4. Frequently Asked Questions
PART TWO / Very Old Bones
5. Pleistocene Wars
6. Cotton (or Anchovies) and Maize (Tales of Two Civilizations, Part I)
7. Writing, Wheels, and Bucket Brigades (Tales of Two Civilizations, Part II)
PART THREE / Landscape with Figures
8. Made in America
9. Amazonia
10. The Artificial Wilderness
11. The Great Law of Peace
Appendixes
A. Loaded Words
B. Talking Knots
C. The Syphilis Exception
D. Calendar Math
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
From the Hardcover edition.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
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redrockbookworm, July 22, 2008 (view all comments by redrockbookworm)
This is one of the most captivating books you will read this year. It will take all of those "truths" you studied so diligently in school and make you question, question, question. Were the Americas (before Columbus) really the unblemished Garden of Eden setting that we have been told, or as Mann purports, were the Native's altering the terrain long before the arrival of Europeans on the scene?
The fact that the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtilan had more inhabitants than Paris and boasted running water and an enclosed sewer system would seem to lend credence to Mann's claims of the native locals shaping their environment and managing their food supplies to satisfy their comfort and convenience levels for many, many years before the appearance of Columbus or Cortez.
Mann's subject matter and writing style as well as his vision, as he attempts to show both sides of this discussion, should assure this "scientific" tome a place of honor on the best seller list. It certainly provides the reader with a lot of food for thought and is definitely a lot more convincing and enthralling than much of the current material residing on the list of best sellers provided by our local newspapers.
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Mikel O, June 28, 2007 (view all comments by Mikel O)
Some of will remember how we all learned in science class that Mercury kept one side to the Sun at all times; one face meltingly hot, the other the coldest planet in the solar system; a picture that inspired dozens of sci-fi novelists. Then the scientists said oops, no, we were wrong, Mercury does rotate enough to show all sides to the sun, after all.
Well, remember how we learned that the first Americans came over the Bering land bridge less than 15,000 years ago; crossed Canada through an ice free corridor that closed up behind them, hunting big game all the way? That their hunting caused mass extinctions? That they spread lightly across two continents, living in sparse hunter gatherer communities that were no match for European guns?
Oops -- this is all wrong, too. For me 1491 was like a good thriller, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough, new science in every paragraph. The well-researched picture he shows will turn every idea you held of the New World upside down. Fascinating and mind-boggling.
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Peter Saucerman, April 6, 2007 (view all comments by Peter Saucerman)
Revisionist history with a scientific backbone. Charles Mann has succeeded in knitting archaeological and anthropological findings together to turn our orthodox beliefs about the Americas, pre-Columbus, on their heads. Much of this science is not really new and many of the findings are regional and incremental. But his skill in connecting the dots presents a startling new picture of the New World, one quite at odds with the conventional textbook stories of a vast, empty continent. He starts each section with a clear overview of the new view he will be charting, then descends into sometimes complex, sometimes arcane pieces of anthro- or archaeological work. Just as it's getting pretty dense for the lay-reader, he has the good sense to link back to the bigger picture. I learned a good bit about the work of these history detectives, as well as getting a very, very different picture of the peoples that lived here for millennia before Columbus.
View all 4 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781400032051
- Subtitle:
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Vintage Books USA
- Subject:
- Americas (North Central South West Indies)
- Subject:
- North American
- Subject:
- Native American
- Subject:
- Antiquities
- Copyright:
- 2006
- Edition Number:
- Reprint ed.
- Series:
- Vintage
- Publication Date:
- October 2006
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 541
- Dimensions:
- 7.98x5.22x1.15 in. 1.23 lbs.
