List of Maps
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
Charles C. Mann is a correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly, and has cowritten four previous books including Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species and The Second Creation. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he has won awards from the American Bar Association, the Margaret Sanger Foundation, the American Institute of Physics, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others. His writing was selected for The Best American Science Writing 2003 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003. He lives with his wife and their children in Amherst, Massachusetts.
“A superbly written and very important book: by far the most
comprehensive synthesis I’ve ever seen of the growing body of
evidence that our most deep-rooted ideas about the peopling of the
Western hemisphere and the kinds of societies that had developed
there by the time of European contact are fundamentally wrong.
Charles C. Mann is one of those rare writers who can make scholarly
concepts exciting and accessible without trivializing them. In 1491
he has integrated the latest research in many different areas with
his own insights and experiences to produce a fascinating and
addictively readable tour through the ‘New World’ before its
‘discovery.’ His book is, above all, a wonderful, unsentimental act
of restitution–challenging centuries of cultural contempt and
willful blindness to show just how vigorous, various, densely
populated and profoundly human the pre-Columbian Americas really
were.”
–James Wilson, author of
The Earth Shall Weep: A History
of Native America
“In the tradition of Jared Diamond and John McPhee, a transforming
new vision of pre-Columbian America.”
–Richard Rhodes
“Every American knows it was a vast new world that Columbus found
in 1492, and most imagine it was a thinly peopled paradise of
plants, animals, and hunter-gatherers waiting for civilization. The
reality, Charles C. Mann tells us in his startling new book about
the world before Columbus, is very different–two continents teeming
with languages, cultures, and mighty cities as big, as rich, and
even more populous than the capitals of Europe. But there was one
thing the new world lacked–resistance to the diseases of the old.
This is a lively book, filled with excitements and sorrows–a major
contribution to our understanding of the achievements and the fate
of the people we call Indians.”
–Tom Powers
“Charles C. Mann takes us into a complex, fascinating, and unknown
world, that of the Indians who lived in this hemisphere before
Columbus. He gently demolishes entrenched myths, with impressive
scholarship, and with an elegance of style which that makes his
book a pleasure to read as well as a marvelous education.”
–Howard Zinn
“When does American history begin? The old answer used to be 1492,
with the European arrival in the Americas. That answer is no longer
politically or historically correct. For the last thirty years or
so historians, geographers, and archaeologists have built up an
arsenal of evidence about the residents of North America after the
ice receded and before the Europeans arrived. Mann has mastered
that scholarship and written the most elegant synthesis of the way
we were before the European invasion.”
–Joseph J. Ellis, author of
His Excellency: George Washington
"A superbly written and very important book: by far the most
comprehensive synthesis I've ever seen of the growing body of
evidence that our most deep-rooted ideas about the peopling of the
Western hemisphere and the kinds of societies that had developed
there by the time of European contact are fundamentally wrong.
Charles C. Mann is one of those rare writers who can make scholarly
concepts exciting and accessible without trivializing them. In
1491 he has integrated the latest research in many different
areas with his own insights and experiences to produce a
fascinating and addictively readable tour through the 'New World'
before its 'discovery.' His book is, above all, a wonderful,
unsentimental act of restitution-challenging centuries of cultural
contempt and willful blindness to show just how vigorous, various,
densely populated and profoundly human the pre-Columbian
Americas really were."
-James Wilson, author of
The Earth Shall Weep: A History
of Native America
"In the tradition of Jared Diamond and John McPhee, a transforming
new vision of pre-Columbian America."
-Richard Rhodes
"Every American knows it was a vast new world that Columbus found
in 1492, and most imagine it was a thinly peopled paradise of
plants, animals, and hunter-gatherers waiting for civilization. The
reality, Charles C. Mann tells us in his startling new book about
the world before Columbus, is very different-two continents teeming
with languages, cultures, and mighty cities as big, as rich, and
even more populous than the capitals of Europe. But there was one
thing the new world lacked-resistance to the diseases of the old.
This is a lively book, filled with excitements and sorrows-a major
contribution to our understanding of the achievements and the fate
of the people we call Indians."
-Tom Powers
"Charles C. Mann takes us into a complex, fascinating, and unknown
world, that of the Indians who lived in this hemisphere before
Columbus. He gently demolishes entrenched myths, with impressive
scholarship, and with an elegance of style which that makes his
book a pleasure to read as well as a marvelous education."
-Howard Zinn
"When does American history begin? The old answer used to be 1492,
with the European arrival in the Americas. That answer is no longer
politically or historically correct. For the last thirty years or
so historians, geographers, and archaeologists have built up an
arsenal of evidence about the residents of North America after the
ice receded and before the Europeans arrived. Mann has mastered
that scholarship and written the most elegant synthesis of the way
we were before the European invasion."
-Joseph J. Ellis, author of
His Excellency: George Washington
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
