HIDDEN CITIES : THE DISCOVERY AND LOSS OF ANCIENT NORTH AMERICAN CIVILIZATIONS

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on the Mound Builders
Review: An amazing book about a lost era of American history. Probably one of the best books written on the Mound Builders. While very well documented and footnoted, the book could use more illustrations and maps. Of course to call them "Mound Builders" is not entirely accurate, as they built more than mounds. Pyramids, platforms, circles, squares, cones, octagons, and fortresses. Whoever these mysterious people were, they had a great knowledge of astronomy and geometry to construct what they did, from the Ohio valley to Florida. Many of the sites are lost to time, but there are state parks that do preserve these ancient works. Here we have a lost civilization as great as the Maya--right here in North America!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on the Mound Builders
Review: An amazing book about a lost era of American history. Probably one of the best books written on the Mound Builders. While very well documented and footnoted, the book could use more illustrations and maps. Of course to call them "Mound Builders" is not entirely accurate, as they built more than mounds. Pyramids, platforms, circles, squares, cones, octagons, and fortresses. Whoever these mysterious people were, they had a great knowledge of astronomy and geometry to construct what they did, from the Ohio valley to Florida. Many of the sites are lost to time, but there are state parks that do preserve these ancient works. Here we have a lost civilization as great as the Maya--right here in North America!

Rating:
Summary: The Denial of Ancient America
Review: Here we have yet another piece of history that's been ritually ignored by the arbiters of society and which desperately needs to be taught in American history classes. People nowadays know little about history anyway, but the material in Kennedy's book is one of the first lessons they should learn (One of the central themes of his book--the denial of marginalized people's beliefs and achievements--is also found in Howard Zinn's classic, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES). While I agree that he could have gone deeper into the actual culture and practices of the people who built Cahokia, Poverty Point, Moundville, and Etowah, he did a first-class job of rendering the conflicts at the highest level over whether we were a solely European (Anglo-Saxon) or multicultural civilization. I sincerely hope that at this point we've decided to choose the latter.

Rating:
Summary: wanders all over the place!
Review: If you want to read about politics, but a book on politics. If you want tread about hidden cities/ mound builders buy another book. Too much political wandering throught the 1700's and 1800's and too little about hidden cities.