We used this in teacher training on how to teach accurately about Native Americans in social studies classrooms. Weatherford has so many examples that are interesting for teacher and student alike. So often, teachers don't think to prepare young students before Native Americans come as guests, and kids ask questions like "where's your feathers?" and are disappointed and even disdainful if they're not dressed in traditional garb or talk about Indian affairs instead of doing war whoops.

La historia la escriben los vencedores. Esa es la que conocemos. Pero esta es la otra. La que explica porqué un descubrimiento como había habido muchos otros, cambió la faz de la Tierra. La ciencia, la tecnología, la medicina, la cultura, los sistemas políticos de los indios americanos y su poderosa fuerza transformadora. Sabías que lejos de ser un centro ceremonial, se estima que Machu Pichu era un laboratorio de agronomía avanzada? Que la actual industria farmacéutica tiene su origen en la medicina india y que la democracia representativa, tal como la entendemos hoy, es mucho más próxima a los sistemas políticos indoamericanos que a los de la antigua Grecia.

I learned from this book about the many contributions American Indians have given not onlty the USA but the entuire world..Jack Weatherford is 100% right when he says American Indians have been underrated and mostly ignored when it comes to the contributions they have made to the world economy,food supply and overall culture..This book makes and American Indian even prouder to be an American Indian and I think every American Indian should read this book..

It's so easy to think of the world history through the European prism because that's what we were taught. This book explores the many ways in which the Americas ignited the industrial revolution and transformed the world. Bringing down the power of the African and Arab world and giving the means to Europe to expand and develop. Fascinating read

This was an eye-opening book about not only the changing relationship between a white influx and an indigenous populous, but also the generosity and deviousness shown. It is remarkable what The People gave and what the Europeans gladly took.

I rarely give a book 5 stars, but this was superb. Although I've heard about accomplishments of North and South American Indians, never before have they been grouped together to have this much impact. It is truly stunning when you read about the agricultural, building, and health discoveries and innovations we trace to Indians. And, as a person of European descent, it is heartbreaking to realize how our cultures plundered these often-advanced cultures and destroyed the knowledge they had accumulated.
Although Jack Weatherford does not thoroughly cover all aspects of Native American learning (calendars are an exception), he explores others with great depth and rationality. He is even-handed and does not exalt one culture over another. In the end, he clearly explains the characteristics of the Native American cultures, the accomplishments of the Europeans, and the differences that allowed Europeans to conquer and destroy them.
This is a book that I am thankful to have read and one that I would highly recommend.

An amazing and powerful read. This covered this influence of Native Americans, or Indians as the author referred to them, on almost every aspect of modern life. Indians changed what the rest of the world ate and grew permanently. I knew that, of course. I had read elsewhere about how much of what modern people eat today came from the Americas. Imagine your daily diet without any tomatoes, potatoes, chocolate, chilis, corn, beans, and much, much more. Just corn and potatoes by themselves had revolutionized agriculture forever. The author cited a comparison of European agriculture based on before potatoes and after. Compared to the wheat that was the most common staple and potatoes, the wheat was inferior in the amount of work it took to grow it, its susceptibility to weather and predators, and most especially, to the amount of calories produced versus the amount taken to work the field. Potatoes gave over three times as much return. And then the population exploded, as Europeans finally had enough to eat and to trade.

And how about modern government. Think we got that from the Greeks and Romans? Think again. The US Constitution, which became the model for many other countries, was based not on the ancients but on the Iroquis. The whole idea of a balance of powers, of electing representatives, of governing by consensus, that all came from the Indians. The movies have this example of the Great Indian Chief, but in real life, most tribes were ruled by a council of elders, not by one guy who was in charge of everything.

So why did the Europeans manage to defeat the Native Americans? The main reason, the author felt, is not that the Indians were less advanced. It was just that they had chosen to focus on different things. Europeans used animal power, which the Indians couldn't use. The largest animal on the Americas was the llama, and it's not a beast you can plow with. The Europeans also invented machines and devices to make their work easier. But Indians had life pretty easy in some ways. Plenty of food, less trouble with fitting the environment. They had focused not on machinery or animal husbandry but on medicine, agriculture, transportation. Trouble was, none of these areas of expertise helped them stand up to an enemy that had them outmanned and outgunned.

My favorite example out of this book, the one that staggered my kids when I shared with them, is about the Incan highway system. The Incans built roads and bridges all up and down South America. In fact, some of those roads were transformed into the modern roads used there today. So when a village needed to send a message, they chose one of them who had trained for this purpose. He took the message, either in written or verbal form, and ran it up to the next stop - 250 miles away! That feat was not duplicated until the US came up with the Pony Express, but the Incans had managed to do with - without the pony. That dude from Marathon that delivered some message about a battle - what a wimp!

I really, really wish that I could read an updated edition of this one. In the last chapter, Weatherford talks about how native cultures are under attack, and with every death of an elder, society is losing that store of wisdom that may not be replaceable. Now that 25 years have passed, how much more have we lost? The secrets to curing more diseases with plants? The knowledge of food that will grow under adverse conditions - maybe even in space? The ability to calculate even more complicated mathematics, like the Aztecs had? We don't know. But I am glad that I read this book. It reminded me that the history of America did not start on Plymouth Rock or Jamestown or anywhere like that. America, under one name or another, has been here for thousands of years. 4.5 stars

I saw this book listed on the References page of the 'Lenape Indian Cooking' book. I read the Introduction, three chapters regarding food, and skimmed the rest of the 2010 edition. The cultivated plant foods listed primarily originated in South and Central America, not North America, except for sunflowers (native to the Plains, i.e. Kansas).

Often native Americans are perceived as primitive people who historically had nothing to contribute to world culture that could possibly compare to the knowledge, skills, and technology of their European conquerors. This volume sets that myth decisively to rest, and keeps the reader entertained along the way.
Much of the information concerns native cultures in Central and South America, among whom the author traveled extensively, rather than North America. Even at or before the time of European conquest, these tribes had extensive skills in crop domestication and farming (e.g. 3,ooo different kinds of potatoes, suitable for vastly different growing conditions, which often were more reliable crops than grains) including foods like chocolate, chili peppers, and tomatoes that revolutionized cuisines around the world, numerous medicines and healing techniques (e.g. quinine to treat malaria), the growing of long-strand cotton (much superior to that available in the Old World), democratic governance (not only in theory but in practice, e.g. the League of the Iroquois), political organizing and revolution, construction techniques for roads and earthquake-resistant buildings, and much more. The material was mostly new to me, and so rich that I could almost read the book again a second time . . .

A somewhat dated but still useful read. The work focuses on indigenous groups in Central and South America, though in places its scope extends as far north as to include territory in the southern United States. To examine historical problems, Weatherford starts each chapter with a modern anecdote, and then steps back in time to historize the issue at hand. The overarching thesis is to examine what physical and cultural resources Europeans have appropriated - uncredited - from the indigenous peoples of this region, and how these exported products and ideas have changed and been adopted by other cultures around the globe. Weatherford argues that ultimately, Westerners still don't know indigenous Americans.

This book is clearly aimed at a non-specialist audience. A general public reader will find his style to be accessible and his ideas provocative. A scholar will still be captivated, but no doubt also be frustrated at the maddening lack of citations and the incomprehensibly short source lists for each chapter. His ideas, which are boldly stated, are often presented in a glib manner, and at points errors of omission shine through. One particularly glaring example that caught my eye (pg. 206) was in his discussion of Britain's Opium War with China - at no point does he mention tea (he singles out porcelain and silks) as a main cause of war, which is doubly intriguing as this would lend further credence and discussion to his point on drugs that aided the workers of the new Industrial era, and the lengths that they went to increase productivity and decrease boredom.

Still, it is a book that is a good place to start for generating ideas and conversation.

Fascinating read...amazing outlook on the Americas that is not often told. I found one error in a historical figure near the end but I am hoping the other info in book is factual. I could read this book again and still not remember all the facts the author shared!

Fascinating and thought-provoking, this is a romp across cultures from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic identifying their diverse contributions to the world. From medicinal & recreational drugs to kayaks, canoes, bridges, and democratic confederations, every chapter is full of surprises. The author shares stories and examples of Native American achievements that are largely ignored, using historical & academic sources as well as his own experiences.