★★★★★ 4
Rediscovering America
This is an eye-opening, scholarly rebuttal to common perceptions about native American society before and after the European invasion. Ronald Wright makes no secret of his bias in favor of the people who were here first; in fact, he enhances the impact of what for many will be new information by presenting this extraordinary history from the point of view of the conquered. He also makes clear how large a part of the conquest was due to immune system rather than military deficiencies: if smallpox and other diseases had not done killed most of the native population, the facts recounted here suggest that history, particularly in South America, may have evolved quite differently.
In undertaking the massive task of recounting the invasion of all of the Americas, some selectivity is inevitable. Wright has chosen to focus on the story of five distinct native groups: Aztec, Maya, Inca, Cherokee and Iroquois. He then arbitrarily subdivides the story into three consecutive time periods: Conquest, Resistance and Rebirth. After the physical and political annihilation recounted in the first two sections, the title of the third may seem overly optimistic, particularly for the Guatemalan Maya. However, the concluding tone is more conciliatory and hopeful than mournful, particularly in the Afterword that updates matters to 2005, 13 years after the original publication date. The astounding amount of research involved in producing this admittedly selective overview is well-indexed and annotated.
My only quibble is that Wright, obviously an expert in the field of native culture, sometimes borders on the compulsive in matters of linguistic authenticity. I did not buy this book to learn ancient native languages, let alone their pronunciation, and at times I found the inclusion of such trivia distracted from rather than enhanced the otherwise convincing scholarship. This obsession with accuracy is commendable, but after getting it out of his system in the Author's note, his amazing narrative would have been no less compelling if he stuck to the language of his contemporary audience. Also, for an author who has settled in British Columbia, it is strangely disappointing that the rich history of the Pacific Northwest coastal natives was not among those he chose to examine.
I had read Charles Mann's "1491" prior to this book and found it primed my interest in the subject; both are excellent introductions to the reality of pre-Columbian American societies, but Stolen Continents provides more of a historical context for what has become of them.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2008
