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Description
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before ColumbusA groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes,
A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong. In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them: - In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.- Certain cities-such as Tenochtitl n, the Aztec capital-were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitl n, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
- The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
- Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering."
- Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it-a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
- Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings. Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 08/09/2005
ISBN: 9781400040063
Pages: 480
Weight: 1.85lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.60w x 1.60d
Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2005 pg. 72
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2005 pg. 625
Publishers Weekly 06/20/2005 pg. 69
Ingram Advance 08/01/2005 pg. 61
Booklist 08/01/2005 pg. 1986
Library Journal 08/01/2005 pg. 96
New York Times 10/09/2005 pg. 21
New York Review of Books 12/01/2005 pg. 43
Library Journal 08/15/2005
Time 12/26/2005 pg. 177
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2006 pg. 8
Science Books & Films 01/01/2006 pg. 23
Multicultural Review 06/01/2006 pg. 81
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4.5 ★★★★★
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 3
This first part of this book was great for learning about Gandhi's life
Format: Kindle
This first part of this book was great for learning about Gandhi's life. The pictures were enjoyable as well. Near the end of the first part of the book, the main ideas were being repeated. I didn't enjoy the second part of the book which focused on analyzing Gandhi's philosophy and also repeated many of the ideas made in the first part of the book.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2015
★★★★★ 5
A Rich and Wonderful Pictorial Biography
Format: Paperback
This is a beautiful book that tells Ghandi's story through wonderful photographs and a simple and elucidating text. Ghandi appears os a struggling human being who changes himself through hard work. It really is a story of transformation, and it's very well told here. I liked it so well, I used it as part of our study on world revolutions when I was teaching ninth grade last year, and the students also liked it very much.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2013
★★★★★ 4
A Tool for Study
Format: Kindle
Though this book feels like it has been cobbled together from different sources it provides a sense of Gandhi's spiritual growth and the sources for it. His ideas and principles are clearly and often repeatedly stated offering the student the benefit of repetition in varied words. I'll be reading it again and again to extract a summary of those. Recommended for beginning Gandhi explorers.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2016
★★★★★ 5
Off the couch and on the road
Format: Kindle
Even those who are happy in their circumstance may find themselves discontented with the sameness of their days. An adventure will relieve this, and perhaps we can make the adventure happen, and yet the sameness of our days is the very thing that holds us back. But then we read how someone actually did it, had a true adventure to match the best of our daydreams, and we think, I could do that, too!
Beth Jusino’s Camino memoir is for everyone who has ever considered doing something extraordinary, something beyond everyday life. She freely admits her life was sedentary — as couch-bound as you or I — but then the notion of the Camino grew from daydream to impulse, and then became irresistible, and she was fortunate to have a husband who gladly came along.
It’s a book of astonishing quality, the words well-chosen, each page proof of her craft. She engages us not only with her physical ordeal (which is considerable, until she finds better shoes along the way), but also with her wonderment at the things she sees, the people she meets on the way, and we are compelled along, turning each page to see what happens next. Her story is not only rich in anecdote but also in the wealth of reflection on what she sees and hears along the way. Some particular scenes that stay fixed in memory are her encounters with a flock of sheep she meets at just the point when she needs them — a Camino miracle! — and also her descriptions of the great storks in their huge nests on all the church steeples and other high points along the way. Again and again I marked passages in the text so that I may come back and enjoy them once more.
It’s also a love story, and the measure of this is the way we begin to anticipate her moments of particular challenge when her husband will do whatever needs doing or say whatever she needs to hear. It’s his story as well as hers, and she knows this and sets it down, and in so doing, tells us that perhaps she could not have finished her journey without him.
Those who have walked any part of the road to Santiago will relive moments in familiar places and perhaps see what they missed the first time along the way and gain a new insight, a fresh view of what they overlooked before. And they may think, yes, I’ll go again!
But if you’ve never had an adventure and Santiago is no more than the stuff of your daydreams, if you have so far only imagined such an undertaking, if the sameness of your days holds you back, then read this book.
Then go out and do it. But make sure you buy the right shoes.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2021
★★★★★ 4
Walking from La Puy to Finisterre...a well written memoir
Format: Paperback
The key to writing a Camino book--at least from this reader's perspective--it to have a well-written, well-edited, and unique personal account of the adventure. I've read many Camino books that lack these three elements. WTTEOTW has all three elements and is a great addition to anyone's Camino library.
The book is paced nicely and makes for an easy read. I was amused that the author had spent considerable time preparing for this trip yet seemed not to have absorbed some important information prior to the trip--e.g. appropriate footwear, the scramble for nightly accommodations, the frustrations that commonly occur while traveling in unfamiliar cultures. Her adjustments along the way provide humor and insight into preparing for things we've not yet experienced in our own lives.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2019