I received this book from my dad several years ago. It’s taken me a long time to finish it. I started reading it when Anastasia was born, which was two years ago, but it got set aside when things got crazy. I picked it up again 6 weeks ago. It is a very good book, but it is slow going because it is so long.

The point that the author makes in the book is that the Americas were a bustling populous place before Columbus arrived. This leads to a little bit of bias in the author’s focus on the “superstar” cultures like the Aztec, Maya, and Inka. He doesn’t talk about the Pueblo tribes or the Pacific Northwest or the people in the Southeast US, which is disappointing, but I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere.

My only annoyance with the book is his tactic of playing a sort of bait-and-switch game. He spends time talking about the history of a culture, using old and out-dated models, and just as I roll my eyes and say “but that’s not what current research says,” he suddenly switches and says “But that’s how we used to see things; this is how we see things now.” He could have freed up some space in the book by cutting to the most recent research first.

Charles C. Mann. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. 2005. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.