Books about the history of the Americas

August 13, 2021 2:41 PM

I've just returned to my home in the US from my first trip to Mexico City. I'm really interested in the history of the indigenous people of the Americas, especially in the differences between North and South American cultures and how they were each affected by the arrival of Europeans. Can you recommend some books on this subject? Thanks.
posted by something something to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

Germs, Guns, and Steel by Jared Diamond is one place to start.

I'll be watching this thread with interest as I wish I had other books/resources to recommend.
posted by Hermione Granger at 2:44 PM on August 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

1491 by Charles Mann.
posted by kevinbelt at 3:12 PM on August 13, 2021 [12 favorites]

They're about 15 years old (and I haven't read them since they came out), but IIRC Charles Mann's "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" and "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created" extensively cover North and South American indigenous cultures pre- and post-Europeans. They're very good (if not more than a little depressing) reads.
posted by Ufez Jones at 3:13 PM on August 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

The Inconvenient Indian by a Thomas King. Very interesting, very readable, actually by an indigenous author, but North America only, I'm pretty sure.

I have heard good things about this book but have not read it personally: Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend.
posted by carolr at 3:20 PM on August 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

I like Stolen continents by Ronald Wright written about 1992.

He discusses Aztec, Maya, Inca, Cherokee and Iroquois in 3 parts: invasion, resistance, rebirth (meaning there's 15 chapters). Very readable and very interesting. I like how he discusses the Aztec writers who were writing a few decades after the Cortes invasion.

I'll second The inconvenient Indian.
posted by philfromhavelock at 3:54 PM on August 13, 2021

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs is great. I haven't finished it yet, but the first few chapters tries to show things from an indigenous perspective because there's a lot of early colonial literature written in Nahuatl by Nahuas. You can read some English translations, like the Manuscrito Techialoyan de Mimiapan, that are hosted on The Mapas Project,

Mesolore has a detailed summary about the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, a document showing the conquest of Mexico from the perspective of the Tlaxcalteca, main allies of Hernán Cortés.

Check out famsi.org for more information on Mesoamerican cultures, including translations of poetry by Nezahualcoyotl.

I'm going to watch this thread closely too. I don't have recommendations for more general books outside of most of what's mentioned in earlier comments.
posted by Mister Cheese at 4:08 PM on August 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel and 1491. (And 1493.) But, it's worth noting that many people who study pre-conquest North America have very strong and negative opinions about them. Especially the first one. (No reason not to read them. They're great! But, consider also reading the criticism as well.) I also really enjoyed Prashad's The Poorer Nations and The Darker Nations, which are much more general and contemporary and only a little bit about Mexico. They are also not uncontroversial.

If old-timey language and some very ugly colonialist opinions aren't too frustrating, I genuinely enjoyed both of William H. Prescott's Conquest books. They're wrong about many things. But, they're free.
posted by eotvos at 4:11 PM on August 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

An interesting perspective I read recently was A History of Upper and Lower California by Alexander Forbes from 1839. It's the first English (language and nationality) history of the area, and while it's not specifically about the indigenous peoples it does give an overview of the history of Spanish colonization that's relatively contemporary to the period. And because it's old, it is freely available to download!

An interesting follow-up to that was We are the Land: A History of Native California, which was published earlier this year, and which follows that history into the modern era.
posted by Jawn at 4:22 PM on August 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Society Against the State by Pierre Clastres is an interesting read. It is based on his time spent with indigenous people in Paraguay and Venezuela.
posted by perhapses at 4:23 PM on August 13, 2021

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 6:10 PM on August 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Guns, Germs, and Steel is not a good book if you want accurate analysis and not a conclusion searching for evidence. A better book on the influence of disease, for example, would be Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America (spoiler: genocide did not occur by germs).

/r/AskHistorians is a really well-regarded, heavily-moderated subreddit and they have a lot of recommended books to look at if you're interested.
posted by Anonymous at 6:28 PM on August 13, 2021

I think the classic of this genre is Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galleano.
posted by MeadowlarkMaude at 10:57 PM on August 13, 2021

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is another classic of the genre (though a lot of 2021 readers, myself included, might prefer to read something by an indigenous author).

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory is focused on the US, but it's very good. I can second Open Veins of Latin America and An Indigenous People's History of the United States, though I can't think of any books that compare/contrast North and South America.

(Not specifically a big fan of Jared 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' Diamond. He's a good writer and researcher, but, as others have noted, he's not a great analyst. Like Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis, and Seth Abramson. This parenthetical aside may have become a bit of a hot take.)
posted by box at 6:57 AM on August 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

For a prev similar AskMe, I puffed Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon [1983]
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:33 AM on August 15, 2021