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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a good read!, June 20, 2000
Being from the Caribbean myself, I enjoyed how Michener attempted to thread the histories of the many diverse islands (one of which is my home)...however I agree with another reader that as soon as you get caught up in one section of the novel, we are taken to another island with another history...the novel will start with the true natives, the Tainos and Caribs...it will even take you to the backdrop of the Mayan civilization briefly..."the Spanish Lake" was my favorite part of the book....the battles between the Spaniards and the British are skillfully sketched, displaying the best and worst of both sides...the fistional island called "All Saints" in the book I found unnecesary...no reason to invent a history of an imaginary island in a book of this nature which is already struggling to cover the diversity that is the Caribbean...all in all, I enjoyed the book and the author held my interest...I would say it is a fun way to read history....I also recommend Galeano's "Memory of fire" a triology of the Americas....
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A book of epic proportions - literally!, February 5, 2004
Reader beware - 800 plus pages, so this is no book for story time. Extremely prolific, James A. Michener writes as only he can write about the Caribbean, that vast expanse of ocean surrounded by Cuba, Puerto Rico and the extensive small islands smattered across the seascape. This is a powerful history of these islands, and James Michener takes us from the 1300s when a peaceful tribe of Arawaks are horribly destroyed all the way to Castro's Cuba. This is the sort of book one would do better learning about this area from, as the author weaves plot upon plot into a brilliantly masterminded historical novel. You will learn more from this book about the Caribbean Sea and its islands than any history or geography class could give you, and you will have more fun doing it! I gave it four stars simply because with a book this size, there was bound to be some dreadfully boring parts, and there were. If it were a bit shorter in length it would lack nothing but a Pulitzer.
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent, in-depth .. top-notch michener, February 17, 2000
If you have read and like michener, this is a classic (my personal favorite). If you have not, classic michener means that he takes a very in-depth, well researched area and wraps a novel around it. In Carribean, he looks at the evolution from the Mayan times to the modern, covering the cultures, the facts and the myths. What makes it fun is the way he wraps his exhaustive research of the facts into the regions myths and a set of characters. This makes the novels fun and interesting, because even though the people are ficticious, one identifies more with the stories of people than a textbook approach to the facts. The chapters, dealing with different historical periods, focus on various sub-regions as they wane and wax in power and importance. It particularly appealed to my interest in history and frankly may be tiresome to those who do not have the same passion for history (ie, if you don't like historical accounts, you may not like this book!) Oh, yes, there are pirates, human sacrefice, and you learn where the term barbeque comes from...you may not want to know that!
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