Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Peter Johnson HighBridge Company 2005 (Audio CD) ISBN: =”1565119789”

My Review 4/5

First. The book can be halved and/or skipped around if you favor one continent or another. Mann does a phenomenal job traversing the histories of a peoples who were wiped off the earth by diseases.

This book covers everything you wanted to know:

  • Were all native populations nomads? Emphatically no, most city centers were ravaged by diseases

  • Did natives ‘live at peace’ with their surroundings? No, by all accounts natives did just as much damage/conscious cultivation to their surroundings as any later white population

  • Do Americans owe their sense of liberty to the values of natives? By some accounts Yes. The culture shock of seeing libertarian values of equality was hard for Europeans

After reading this book I have a better understanding of ‘the rest of the story’. I definitely would recommend to anyone who wonders about the past inhabitants.

Date Read

2019/05/09

Date Added

2019/04/29

Significant Revisions