Charles C. Mann's groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, now expanded and updated in this new edition, radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, Columbus did not land in a sparsely settled, near-pristine wilderness. Recent research has shown that Indians arrived millennia earlier than previously thought and shaped the land around them in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. 

2006 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for its excellence in reporting and communicating science to the general public.