Customer Reviews

America's Fascinating Indian Heritage: The First Americans: Their Customs, Art, History and How They Lived

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This book is used extensively at local colleges in the area of Chico, California, including CSU Chico and Butte College. It has some minor errors that any instructor should be able to pick up on and correct for the student, but overall is a good introductory text; it is very readable, is full of wonderful color plates, and is one of few texts that people may actually want to keep around as a coffee table book!

America's Fascinating Indian Heritage, by Reader's Digest, provides an informative, readable, and engaging introduction to Native American societies of the American continent north of Mexico. Although intended for a popular audience, the detailed contributions of the expert editorial staff have produced a volume that is both educational and entertaining. Structured using a "Culture Area" model, the book is divided into chapters that describe the lifeways of similar societies living in similar environments.

What makes this book distinctive from other, more authoritive, texts is its rich supply of full color maps and illustrations, many of which document rarely seen events and artifacts. Others clearly illustrate such complex processes as a seasonal round in the Great Basin, the construction of a canoe in the Subarctic, and the assembly of a tipi in the Plains. In addition, the text of each chapter contains various _fictional_ first-person narritives describing details of daily life in these societies. While the usefulness, accuracy, and appropriateness of these "accounts" are questioned by some, in most cases, I've found that they help readers and students to imagine, sympathize, understand, and relate with these traditional lifeways. As such, they add more than they detract from the educational value of this text. However, there are some obvious factual errors which most be guarded against, whose presence may be evidence of the potentially dated nature of this volume, originally from 1978. Similarly, any new developments and discoveries of the last twenty-five years are not represented. Further, from the perspective of this Archaeologist, discussion of the prehistoric and developmental aspects of these societies is incomplete.

Yet, despite these failings, the interest and enthusiasm this book instills about Native American cultures and how they lived, and its rich factual content, ensures that America's Fascinating Indian Heritage will remain a widely-used introductory text for this subject.

Highly informative. Well organized. Easy to read. Illustrated superbly.

Provides the reader a basic source of information on the subject.

Could not ask for a better intro to the subject, had been wanting one for quite a while. God blessed that desire and I got this book for free days later. Really helps to understand the distinct and rich cultures of the various tribal groupings and their interactions with European-American civilizations, and is backed by lots of photographs, maps, and illustrations.

This is a very good book, it is richly illustrated and covers the entire continent. Like many Readers Digest books it has many interesting sidebars that help give context to the main chapter theme. Likewise, the maps are very useful and well prepared. Many illustrations depict artifacts that give good insight into the cultures being described. This book is essential for the beginning American history student.

This book is everything I wanted to know about the lives and customs of Native Americans. It is well written, easy to read, and gives an insite into the many and varied cultural differences of the tribes.