This is an important book that debunks many of the myths and misinformation about the so called New World and the people who inhabited it prior to Columbus' arrival. It should be required reading for every high school student.

"History" of America pre Columbus. It may be that the population
was comparable with that of Europe, but the bulk of it was wiped
out by disease before the Europeans arrived in significant numbers. (Whether this si true
is certainly an important question.) ( )

Highly recommended, at times romanticized, but always informative popular history that tells the story of pre-columbian America. ( )

For me this was a mind-opening account of the cultures of America before Columbus. ( )

1491 is a very enjoyable non-fiction book. Charles Mann tackles a subject that’s both big enough, and fresh enough, to immerse the interested reader from start to finish: what was the ‘new world’ of the western hemisphere really like in pre-Columbian days? Was it a sparsely-populated wilderness, dominated by ‘nature’ and traveled lightly by bands of low-impact nomads? Or were the complex urban societies such as the Maya and the Inca more typical?

Mann moves back and forth between broad historical narration and on-the-spot reportage of recent archaeological and anthropological research projects. His style for both is engaging, informative without being dull, and generally judicious.

Mann’s only flaw is his weakness for politically-correct digs at European civilization. This isn’t a big problem – he’s not a complete breast-beating apologizer – but he occasionally throws in remarks that really sound stupid if you stop to think about them, e.g. that the civilizations of the Americas were disadvantaged in comparison to Europeans because the latter had other advanced cultures such as China and the Islamic world from whom they could ‘steal’ all of their ideas.

Still, I’d highly recommend this one. It’s a fun and genuinely eye-opening read. ( )