America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus Paperback - 1993

First line

IT WAS NOT UNTIL 1498, when he explored what is now Venezuela, that Columbus realized he had touched upon a continent.

From the jacket flap

When Columbus landed in 1492, the New World was far from being a vast expanse of empty wilderness: it was home to some seventy-five million people. They ranged from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, spoke as many as two thousand different languages, and lived in groups that varied from small bands of hunter-gatherers to the sophisticated and dazzling empires of the Incas and Aztecs. This brilliantly detailed and documented volume brings together essays by fifteen leading scholars field to present a comprehensive and richly evocative portrait of Native American life on the eve of Columbus's first landfall.
Developed at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian and edited by award-winning author Alvin M. Josehpy, Jr., America in 1492 is an invaluable work that combines the insights of historians, anthropologists, and students of art, religion, and folklore. Its dozens of illustrations, drawn from largely from the rare books and manuscripts housed at the Newberry Library, open a window on worlds flourished in the Americas five hundred years ago.

Media reviews

"A teeming panorama of North and South American life from prehistoric times through the 15th century .... A book like [this]needs no recommendation beyond its accuracy, comprehensiveness, and serious of purpose." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"America in 1492 totally shatters the pious fiction that there was no civilization here before the arrival of Columbus." -- Dee Brown

Citations

• Publishers Weekly, 01/11/1993, Page 0