Customer Reviews

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 (Downtown Bookworks Books)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Quite often when I've given talks about the material in "1491," elementary- and middle-school teachers have asked me if there was an equivalent book for younger readers. They wanted to make sure their students learned more about the first 20,000 years of American history than I, for example, had learned in my school. Or than my son had learned in his school. I was always unable to think of another book. So when a publisher asked if I would do this, I was more than ready to do it.

The only problem was that I had never written anything for young readers. I wasn't at all sure I could get the tone and vocabulary right. My agent put me in touch with Rebecca Stefoff, who had written books for young people that handled complicated historical and scientific material without dumbing it down -- exactly what I hoped this book could do. So I prepared a detailed outline, Rebecca wrote up a terrific first draft, and then we passed the ms. back and forth.

Now for the reason for this note. Due to an editorial error, Rebecca's name was left off the cover of this book (though not, hooray, this Amazon page). I feel terrible that the book does not credit her, a mistake the publisher has promised to rectify in future editions. If anyone who is looking at this note has enjoyed the book, you should know that much of your enjoyment is due to Rebecca.

Thanks, Rebecca!

Charles C. Mann

PS: I know it's cheesy to give your own books 5 stars. But Amazon won't let you submit a comment unless you rate the book. And I wasn't going to give the book Rebecca and I put together 1 star, because I'm proud of it, so I thought, what the heck.

This beautiful book was written and is marketed as a short and sweet "student's version" of the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by the same author, Charles C. Mann. The original book was a New York Times bestseller and won several national book prizes. This more colorful but more approachable book aimed at younger readers takes the high points and delivers them in a direct and colorful package.

Part One looks at "How Old was the New World?" with four chapters on "Cities in the Desert" (the Peruvian desert's Caral and other sites of the Norte Chico, including Huaricanga, the oldest known American city at 3500 B.C.-- second oldest after Mesopotamia and building big pyramids before the Egyptians), "Genetic Engineering" (development of maize and the milpa field system in Central America), "From Olmec to Maya" (civilizations and sites of Central America: Tres Zapotes, La Venta, Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Maya), and "To the Land of Four Quarters" (Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire).

Part Two asks "Why Did Europe Succeed?" with four chapters on "The Great Meeting" (Cortez and the Aztecs at Tenochtitlan), "Long, Long Ago" (the first Americans, the PaleoIndians, and Monte Verde in Chile), "Extinction" (the demise of the megafauna, including mammoths), and "Disease-Free Paradise? (the impact of European disease on the Native Americans)."

Part Three examines "Were the Americas really a Wilderness?" in its three chapters "Amazonia," (Indian tree-farms and the secret of fertility known as terra preta), "Land of Fire" (the use of controlled burns by Indians in maintaining a living mosaic of prairies, parkland and forest), and "The Created Wilderness" (the destruction of the Indian populations meant a change in the landscape that was no longer maintained through burning, and more).

The end material includes a glossary, a brief list for further reading with websites, credits and index. The binding is reinforced and hardcover with a dust cover.

I have the original book that this book was based on, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, and I do suggest buying the two books together as they are complementary. This book serves as a image-packed version for younger readers as well as those older readers who just want the highlights. The original book is much thicker, more scholarly and detailed with all the references and footnotes other reviewers of this book were looking for. But even readers of the original book will also enjoy the photographs in this book. Buy both books together...Required reading!

As a huge fan of 1491: Before Columbus, I was so excited to see that this full-color companion book was being published. I often reference the research presented in the original book and recommend it highly to others, and it consistently ranks as one of my favorite books (alongside Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies).

Before Columbus is a coffee-table sized books with big color pictures. It is geared towards young readers, but the reading level is nothing to be sniffed at. It could easily be marketed as an adult coffee table book. The writing is mature and doesn't "talk down". It is definitely more at the level of middle school and above.

This book follows along with the topics of the original, with three sections. The first section focuses on the ancient beginnings of civilizations in the New World. The next section asks the question "Why did Europe Succeed?", and focuses on smallpox and other diseases that decimated the Americas. Finally, the final section uses the Amazon rainforest and the mound-builders of the southern United States to show how indigenous people reshaped the American landscape. The book finishes with a glossary and list of suggested websites and reading. An index makes it easy to look up articles of interest.

The photographs and illustrations, as well as the creative typesetting, makes the book very visually appealing.

I had no idea the Indian culture was as advanced as it seemed to be. Orchards, canals, the use of fire to encourage game development. This book is a real eye-opener and a fascinating peek at a continent's development prevously unknown to me.

A coffee table format, lavishly decorated with colorful illustrations, inserts and talking points in huge typefaces, BEFORE COLUMBUS seems to be targeted at a young audience, its mission to make the readers aware that America's past is far from being a settled topic.

Charles Mann, a descendant of a Mayflower pilgrim and a writer fascinated with America's history, partitioned this book into three parts, each advancing a specific idea, one more controversial than the other two.

The first part deals with 'how old' or 'for how long' have humans inhabited the Americas. It is increasingly accepted today and there is supporting evidence that migration from Siberia some 10,000 years ago was only one wave and, quite possibly, not the first wave of continental settlement. We also learn how some of the oldest American cultures and habitations were as sophisticated and sometimes more advanced than their European or Asian contemporaries. We also learn that the early Americans developed corn out of wild grasses and practiced agriculture in ways that did not deplete the soil.

The second part deals with the European conquest. How could a handful of Europeans conquer vast American empires? They used the tactics of divide and conquer, of course, and they exposed the natives to diseases their immune system could not handle.

Finally, and this is the more controversial section, the author suggests that the Americas, almost from pole to pole, were, in fact, not a desolate wilderness but densely populated lands, very much managed and shaped by the people who inhabited them. While it may be true that, at the time of the pilgrims arrival, much of North America was, indeed, pretty wild that was because most of the natives had just died of European-introduced diseases so there was no one left to manage the parkland, the orchards, the farmland and the great game preserves.

I saw no major issues with the first two parts. The narration is very much in tune to where today's scholarship seems to be. Yes, it's probable that the Americas were settled by humans earlier than 10,000 years ago and, yes, European epidemics killed many natives. It is also true that quite a few pre-Columbian civilizations collapsed on their own or simply disappeared long before disease-bearing Europeans came to conquer the land. However, the third part, suggesting that large areas of North and South America used to be carefully managed lands - the Amazon jungle a giant orchard, the Great Plains a giant game preserve - does not appear to be supported by much evidence other than the author's strong belief that it had to be that way. It's an interesting theory but I was not convinced.

When it comes to 'facts', the 100-page, heavily illustrated book could benefit a young reader but my impression is that this could have been a better resource if the factual information was less selective and not put together in ways that would support the author's beliefs. There is a thin bibliography at the end of the book but there are zero quotations or precise references to actual sources within the text itself - there is a section for illustration credits. Somewhat surprisingly, the book comes with an index.

I am not sure how the reading of this book could benefit a 6th or 7th grader but I may find out soon. My two boys are aware of its existence now and they are likely to at least give it a try. I will update my review if and when I hear from them. Until then, it's a 3-star (means "it's Okay") for the author's not clearly separating facts from his own beliefs.

The numerous maps and illustrations are nice but they seem to support the saying that a picture is worth a thousand (or more) words. Only that many thousands of words needed to support the pictures are not there.

Before Columbus / 978-1-4169-4900-8

I am a huge fan of Mann's "1491", and I thought for the longest time that "1491" really needed a companion text - with pictures - to distill a lot of the wonderful material in his superb history book to a more reachable format. I was therefore delighted when this book became available on Vine, but I am a little disappointed that this feels more like a child's history text than a straight-up companion to "1491".

Not that a child's history book isn't phenomenally welcome - as Mann pointed out in "1491", a good deal of incorrect information is still being taught to school children, and it is distressing to realize that inertia will probably ensure that misinformation will continue to be taught for years to come, without pioneers like Mann leading the way. So in that regard, "Before Columbus" is welcome and necessary.

As a child's textbook, then, "Before Columbus" is superb - the full page color pictures are beautiful, the text is informative and engaging, and all the little side-bar informative sections that you may remember fondly from your childhood textbooks are here. Mann has done a wonderful job of teaching at a child's level - the information here is carefully laid out, with all the necessary details, but not so many as to be distracting or confusing. I would definitely recommend this book as instructional material to any child or young adult.

However, as a caveat, I would say that teenagers and adults will probably benefit more from the original "1491" rather than from this book. This text isn't really a supplement to "1491" in the way I had hoped - it's more of a stand-alone book for children. The 'written-for-children' prose style and textbook format will probably not appeal to older readers, if only because the textbook format can have the unconscious effect of turning off the reading-for-pleasure sectors in your brain after years in the school system.

In all seriousness, this is a superb instruction material for young readers, and I highly recommend it as such, but if you're an adult fan of "1491" and are looking at this book as a sequel or supplement, you may want to check it out in a library before you commit to buying. I do hope that Mann will be allowed in the near future to put out a new edition of "1491" with color photos like this gorgeous textbook, because that would definitely be the best of both worlds for older readers.

NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine.

~ Ana Mardoll

Full of interesting, relevant color photos and maps, this oversized coffee table-sized book is a great introduction to the American Indian for school children (I'd recommend 4th grade and above) or even adults who want a quick and painless introduction to the topic.

"Before Columbus" is Mann's adaptation of his larger work 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and he succeeds at making it age appropriate without watering it down.

All major groups and most geographic zones are covered quite well with special emphasis on the Mayans, Olmecs and the Incas. Mann also discusses the role of disease in the Old World conquest of the New World (sadly, too often overlooked in too many textbooks!) and the importance of the development of maize.

Highly recommended.

I knew that something didn't sound quite right when I was told that Christopher Columbus discovered America at school. Even back then as a small child, I wondered what the real truth was and what ancient civilizations must have flourished there in times long forgotten.

This book does a great job of highlighting the significance of civilizations that thrived before and during the founding of modern America, and reveals many fascinating facts and events that will thrill the younger (and older) reader. The book has a good balance of illustrations and photographs that provide some extra substance to the writing and should engage the reader with a shorter attention span.

I will certainly ensure that my child reads this book, as it contains not only the history of one of her family origins, but also fills a lot of gaps in history that have been poorly taught, at least in my experience as a pupil. I do recommend this book, but there is one major niggling aspect of it that is unfortunate. The writer uses the phrase "genetic engineering" to highlight the amazing advances made in selective plant breeding, but as we know, genetic engineering is a vastly different topic.

As anyone who has read my review will know, I consider the "adult" version of this book, "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus"*, to be an outstanding book. It covers, in significant depth, current archaeological thinking about the Americas before the Europeans. So I was interested to see how well this "young reader" version of the book would do in distilling the story.

This is, of necessity, a much shorter book, but it does an excellent job of conveying the basic story of native culture before large-scale European settlement and before European diseases decimated native populations. Pre-Columbian America was not the Aztecs and Incas and a lot of wilderness supporting some hunter-gatherers. There were millions of inhabitants spread through many environments with many cultures. In some areas disease killed so many people that wilderness overtook cultivated land, and the remaining people had to adapt to very different lives.

This book summarizes what is now known about the subject in a succinct but highly informative narrative. The basic story is well explained, with well-chosen references to archaeological discoveries. The book is broken into three parts: First, the great civilizations of central America and the Andes are covered. Then Mann explains why the Europeans were so successful in conquering the hemisphere. (And the story is a lot more complicated than the myths of a hundred Spanish guys prancing into big cities on their horses and immediately taking over.) The final section explains that, prior to the epidemics of disease the Europeans triggered, areas like the North American plains and the Amazon were not wildernesses; they were, rather, populated areas that returned to wilderness as native populations shrank.

The language of the book is direct and basic, as befits a book for younger readers. But it doesn't talk down, and would be entirely suitable for an adult who is interested in the topic but who is not much of a book reader. I enjoyed it as a reminder of the "adult" version.

As we come up on Thanksgiving, with its myriad myths about Pilgrims and Indians, this would be an excellent book for letting an older child learn the real story of America before Columbus and how Europeans ended up ruling the hemisphere.

*1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

This is a must read for everyone young and old. You learn the real history of the americans, not just the limited stuff they taught us in elementary school.

You learn about 12,000 year old cave paintings by Native Americans in Teaxas and that the Indians were building pyramids 500 years before the Egyptians and the Incans had way too many mummies. You will have to re-examine your ideas on what the Americans was really like before Columbus.