Charles C. Mann presents a detailed historic account of Native American life before the arrival of Europeans. He maintains that Indians were on the continent longer and had more sophisticated societies than is popularly believed. He discusses how disease altered previously large civilizations and the unfortunate loss of a cultural exchange we could have benefitted more from. Conquest and disease also disrupted whole ecosystems because Indians who tended the land and controlled animal populations were no longer there. Mann makes a great deal of effort to debunk myths about Indians, particularly portrayals of their relationship to their environments as either wasteful or as nonentities.

History buffs. Environmentalists. People interested in anthropology or archeaology.

I loved the way Mann retells the stories of different Native American cultures. The First Thanksgiving story came alive to me like it had never done before. I don't feel mislead by my early education, but I am sorry I missed the historic details until now. Mann does an exceptional job describing the landscape that these societies arose around. He offers great characterization of the historic figures and the archeaologists and anthropologists that study them.

Mann is a journalist, so this book reads extraordinarily well. That being said, I felt like there was more idealism expressed here than if it was a purely scientific account of the evidence. Mann has opinions, and some of them I found annoying. He seems particularly concerned that history textbooks don't portray Native American cultures in any kind of detail. (For a real blank in history he should take a look at non-Egyptian Africa.) I wasn't ready to attribute the birth of government and democracy to just Native Americans either. That being said this didn't distract me at all from the many compelling things he brought to my attention - like how difficult it must have been to domesticate maize, how the Amazon tropical forest was largely domesticated orchards before the arrival of Europeans.

Grab a shovel and go dig up bones and pottery. It must be a remarkable feeling to be the first person to hold a piece of history thousands of years old.

Charles C. Mann isn't a scientist or a historian, but he has written for scientific journals and has published other nonfiction books. He declares in the "Afterword" of this book that he worked with experts extensively, and the book is supplied with 100 pages worth of notes and bibliography for extremely ambitious readers.

I think it's important for everyone to know more history. Americans should know their own history better. The story of the Early Americas is certainly part of that.

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Created Mar 23, 2007 at 8:09pm • Submit your own review...