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Title: A superb book that makes a good point
Review: So many reviews of this book miss the point: before Columbus and other Europeans arrived in the New World that there were tens of millions of residents here, with all the trappings and problems that so many people cause. By the time European settlers arrived perhaps more than 90% of the residents had died due to the influx of contagious diseases spread among them. And much had changed in the century or so as farmed forests became overgrown and formerly heavily hunted populations of animals, such as bison and pigeons, grew way out of hand. The settlers never realized that there were so many people formerly resident and that so much was already "managed". Great fun and great stuff. I especially liked the section on the Amazon, which so many thought was uninhabitable by large groups. Check out "The Lost City of Z" and "The Ecology of Power" for more on this interesting subtopic. There's great food for thought here.
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