Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491
I picked up a copy of this young adult cofee-table sized book filled with drawings and photographs at Mr. B.'s school's book fair back in the fall. I'd heard of the original version by journalist Charles C. Mann and wanted to see how the new, largely theoretical research on Native Americans was being pitched to kids. It's a fair and entertaining rendition, if a little heavy on blaming Europeans for bringing the small pox and other diseases which researchers now believe may have wiped out millions of susceptible people in a very short time.
Mann makes it clear when he introduces the subject that the Europeans didn't spread the diseases on purpose (they had developed immunity to them, partly by living with the animals that carried them, whereas Native Americans hunted but apparently did not raise animals), but he neglects to remind the reader of it as he belabors the point again and again. It also contradicts the title, since the diseases all arrived after Columbus did. But this is the politically-correct version of history, after all.
Nevertheless, it's an fascinating look at research indicating that what is now the continental United States was thickly populated by a variety of sometimes warring peoples who were practiced at building cities and landscaping their world long before European colonists arrived. After most of the Indians died of European diseases spread by Spanish and English explorers, however, the landscape reverted to the wilderness which the colonists found on arrival and understandably decided had been there all along. Kids books are introductions not exhaustive treatments and, in that sense, this is a good one.
UPDATE: A good (if dizzying) photograph exhibit of Mohawk ironworkers on the WTC and others: "There's pride in walking iron."
