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Indlæser... 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbusaf Charles C. Mann
  
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Very good. (  ) k6gst | Sep 4, 2023 |  Probably most people who are interested in this have already read it, but I had not, and when I saw it at a library sale I figured it was time. 1491, of course, is Mann's attempt to describe the Americas as they looked and were inhabited before Columbus arrived. I think he does this fairly well. A lot of his assertions have made it into mainstream thinking by now, 20 years after he wrote it, but then again, there is so much we don't know that I still found the book interesting. The book mainly reminded me of that - that even this particular book itself isn't positive about almost any assertion made. Ideas that I walked away with, though, were mainly that there were many more people living in the Americas than most people assume. It wasn't just a vast wilderness. And in fact, the indigenous people (so hard to decide which term to use - none of the options are ideal) had actually manufactured the land, the plants, and the animals to suit their needs. So the idea that we should return to native ideals of co-existing with nature are a little off. Also, many of these societies were very advanced. In some areas where we think of European society as having the edge, when you look a little deeper, the way the native American societies were living made the most sense for them and the resources they had at hand. Not lesser, just different. All in all, still an interesting book and I'm glad I finally read it. (  ) japaul22 | Jul 25, 2023 | Audiobook. VERY long, VERY dense…but interesting. Listened on audio, viewed some images in physical. By the end, I was ready for it to be over. This was my first “introduction” to the Pre-Columbian Americas since high school, which may have added to the high rating. ( ) kylecarroll | Jul 15, 2023 | great book. the author has taken the time to really understand the subject material. i had the honor of hearing him give a book reading and take questions, and it was clear he was knowledgable on this topic and really cares. (  ) rrf54 | Jul 6, 2023 | Fascinating book, a survey into pre-Columbian American populations. It's incredible how many advanced societies were in the Americas that I never learned about in school. And how much we'll never know about due to the coming of Europeans and the destruction of history. ( ) Andjhostet | Jul 4, 2023 |
 Mann has written an impressive and highly readable book. Even though one can disagree with some of his inferences from the data, he does give both sides of the most important arguments. 1491 is a fitting tribute to those Indians, present and past, whose cause he is championing. Mann has chronicled an important shift in our vision of world development, one our young children could end up studying in their textbooks when they reach junior high.  Mann does not present his thesis as an argument for unrestrained development. It is an argument, though, for human management of natural lands and against what he calls the "ecological nihilism" of insisting that forests be wholly untouched. Mann's style is journalistic, employing the vivid (and sometimes mixed) metaphors of popular science writing: "Peru is the cow-catcher on the train of continental drift. . . . its coastline hits the ocean floor and crumples up like a carpet shoved into a chairleg." Similarly, the book is not a comprehensive history, but a series of reporter's tales: He describes personal encounters with scientists in their labs, archaeologists at their digs, historians in their studies and Indian activists in their frustrations. Readers vicariously share Mann's exposure to fire ants and the tension as his guide's plane runs low on fuel over Mayan ruins. These episodes introduce readers to the debates between older and newer scholars. Initially fresh, the journalistic approach eventually falters as his disorganized narrative rambles forward and backward through the centuries and across vast continents and back again, producing repetition and contradiction. The resulting blur unwittingly conveys a new sort of the old timelessness that Mann so wisely wishes to defeat. Har tilpasningenEr forkortet iHæderspriserDistinctions
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Populære omslag
 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)970.01History and Geography North America North America North America -1599LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (4.16)
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1491
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