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Title: Revisionism at Its Best
Review: Mann's book, while entertaining, is nothing more than speculative revisionism. The book does not read very easily because it jumps around from one topic to the next without warning frequently. Mann's intentions may have been good, but it doesn't excuse the fact that you can't rewrite history simply to promote an idealistic view of native cultures based on circumstantial evidence. He offers no hard facts to promote his patronizing image of Native American civilizations prior to Europeanization. Nonetheless I enjoyed the book because it does offer some new or "fresh" perspectives into Native American cultures prior to (but mainly after) 1492, but I treated it more as fictional entertainment rather than an authentic historical account.
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