Highly engaging, interesting and often mind-blowing of account of the civilizations who flourished in North and South "America" before colonialism.Mann does a thorough job of researching the various debates within anthropology/archaelogy regarding issues like the time frame paleo-Indians began migrating through the Americas, the extent and rate at which Natives transformed their landscape, reasons for the decline of various empires like teh Inca, Maya, etc. Very dense and packed with cool trivia you can impress people at parties with like: the Inca's writing system was based on a highly developed system of knots, the Iriquoan philosophy of equality and liberty is mostly what directly influenced our constitution's founders,etc. Basically, this was a vibrant, inhabited continent with many languages and cultures. It's people employed great amounts of ingenuity to build highly stratified societies which included well-developed writing ssytems, astronomical calendars, domestication of maize from it's ancient ancestor, teosinte, etc. Highly influenced by Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel" and "Collapse" as well as William Cronon's seminal "Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England."