Name: 1491
Rating: 4.127272727272727 (55 reviews)
ISBN: 9781400032051

Charles C. Mann

Describes how recent archaeological research has transformed long-held myths about the Americas, revealing far older and more advanced cultures with a greater population than were previously thought to have existed.

New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1491

Mikayla Nickell

Andrew John Kinney

There is plenty of interesting information in this book, especially for those not already aware of the near extermination of native Americans by diseases, mainly smallpox, introduced by European explorers. The fact that native Americans had large cities in Amazonia and elsewhere should really not surprise us, since there were large cities in other tropical areas, like Angkor Wat, but it is not the history most of us learned in school. It was also interesting to me that Anna Roosevelt, Theodore's grand-daughter played a key part in establishing that cities did exist in Amazonia, since I am endlessly fascinated by TR, and because he led an early, epic, and nearly fatal expedition to the Amazon. But once the main ideas have been laid down in the book, it drags, in my opinion. It seems the author was looking for ways to fill pages after a certain point, and this kind of writing where original points are repeated, perhaps amplified, but nothing new presented, wears me down. Hence the three star review, which is maybe a bit harsh, but honestly by the last third of the book I was simply waiting for it to end, even though the first half was relatively interesting.

Jeni Enjaian

This book would be a great aid to insomniacs...the audiobook version at least. The narrator chosen for this book was horrible. His pronunciation and syntax both suffered mightily through the reading of this book. I think that also colored my opinion of the book in general. 
The book appears to have no orienting focus. I may have missed the logical transitions between different eras and locations because I was not engaged in the audiobook. In he long term, this meant that I really didn't care how the book was drawn to a close. 
One thing that I did notice was that at times, the author appeared to propose a popular assumption, disprove the theory, propose another, disprove that by saying that the original proposal might have been true. Way too confusing.

An analysis of America prior to 1492 describes how the research of archaeologists and anthropologists has transformed myths about the Americas, revealing that the cultures were far older and more advanced than previously known.

1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

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