Rating: 
Summary: A real history that the west may refuse to accept
Review: The author is a magnificant reviewer of the real history, through the viewpoint of a non-expert in history and safely, I would say, provides the essential alternative point of view, supported by proofs that many chose to ignore.This book highlights the importance of looking at history not just from written records but searching for evidents through reviewing past maps, historical evidents, geographical evidents etc. These tools are available to us yet we refuse to use them when we explore our histories. This book also send a good mockery to the history of the Columbus and of course requires the USA to rewrite their history, most importantly, to correct the error in their history text. I spent many years reading the history of the USA and found that most texts prefer to view the landing of Columbus as the first, the "migration" wave as essential. However, very little was mentioned about the hardship they had brought to the Red Indians, other than they reversed their claims that the Red Indians were hostile to them. In turn, I find it a further mockery to the USA history that many rejected migrants from other parts of the world, namely Mexico and Orientals while their early species populated the land that was previously occupied by a once powerful empire. I was further amazed by how the US treated the Mexican as invasion when many states that they were holding now were actually belonged to the Mexicans. Why do they need to hide these histories from their generations? Gavin Menzies started this revolution to show us that a Non-USA American (I refuse to use the word Americans as South and Central Americans, are still Americans), can see better than the USA does. It highlights to us that we should really review our history text and teach our children the actual fact. Let Columbus be a history since there were flaws in his character and he had been enjoying too much fame for something that he hadn't been that great for. It's a hard pie for many of us to take, but in reality, the truth prevails. Long live Gavin!
Rating: 
Summary: Well, maybe, but so what?
Review: There is a lot of evidence that Columbus was not the first human being to discover America. The Vikings were there first. Maybe the Chinese arrived as well. But the critical fact remains that no other country sent expeditions to the New World, that no other country sent settlers to the New World (at least not settlers that survived). So all the earlier efforts dwindled into some sort of "sailing prize." It was the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the English who (for better or worse), decided to investigate this New World and settle it. According to "1421," the Chinese did the very opposite. They burned all the documents and turned their back on the outside world, much as the Japanese were to do later. So the evidence for all this remains scattered, and very much "in the eye of the beholder." But here's one question: if the Chinese really sailed the seas and discovered the world, and mapped it all with great precision, AND... If Christopher Columbus was secretly armed with these maps (of great precision)... well, why couldn't Columbus figure out where he had landed? Why couldn't ANYBODY figure it out, before Amerigo Vespucci, who finally grasped the fact that Columbus had not landed in "India" and the people were not "Indians." That's why Mr. Amerigo got the continent named after him, after all! Was Vespucci working from secret Chinese maps? I don't think so!
:-)
Rating:
Summary: A big hoax by a charming liar
Review: Gavin Menzies is a charming, seductive, inventive story teller, but his book is just an elaborate literary hoax, and belongs on the fiction list. Gavin claims he has real, tangible evidence. Not true. Just check out for yourself some of the sources he cites. His own sources do not support the claims he makes. For example, at pp 201-2(hardcover) Gavin writes of a pulley "for hoisting sails" found on the beach at Neahkahnie, Oregon, about 60 miles south of me. I drove down there and spoke with the curator of the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum. He had talked with Gavin in 2002 and Wayne told Gavin the pulley had already been carbon dated (in 1993) to 1590; and, the wax was beeswax for candles, prized and common cargo for the Spanish trade galleons that traveled between the Philippines and the west coast of North America, on a regular basis, between 1564 and 1815. The pulley was from one of those Manila galleons. In his book (page520) Gavin lists as a source "Tales of the Neahkahnie Treasure", prepared by the Nehalem Valley Historical Society Treasure Committee, 1991, published by the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum. It clearly states (p5) the beeswax, not as Gavin states "paraffin wax" a hydrocarbon product, had been carbon dated to 1681. Further, a pollen study of the beeswax had revealed its source was northern Luzon in the Philippines where there was a certain variety of shrub the bees visited for pollen. Gavin ignores the inconvenient facts, hides them from the reader, and writes as if he is just waiting for the lab to confirm the finding of some possible real Chinese evidence. It's not possible, as Gavin well knows, the lab work has long since been done and it does not fit his time frame. For another example consider the Bimini road story. Gavin devotes a short chapter to this (pp265-277). The Bimini road is a long standing hoax in its own right. Gavin claims all the experts agree it is man made. Not true. He only cites one "expert", David D. Zink, who was not a scientist, rather a former English teacher, a Cayce discple, intrigued with megalithic (big rock) structures and with the origins of myths. All the real experts know it is a natural geologic formation. Just by coincidence I noticed a timely article by Dr. Eugene A. Shinn, a geologist with USGS, in the Jan/Feb 2004 Skeptical Inquirer, pp38-44; "Natural submerged beachrock off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas has been deemed a remmant of Atlantis by the faithful since the 1960s. In spite of geological research demonstrating the stones are natural, 'true believers' continue to be drawn by the strong 'force field'." Take a look at that article and see if you can still believe the nonsense Gavin writes. I could go on and on. Open any page and you will encounter nonsense. Gavin cites sources to be sure, but, if you take the time to read the claimed source material, you will invariably find it doesn't support what he writes. Gavin is desperate for some real, tangible evidence, and he simply ignores or misstates his own source material, and writes whatever he wishes, whatever he thinks may convince the reader his grand fantasy is true. The book is a hoax and belongs on the fiction list.
Rating:
Summary: great book, interesting reading!
Review: Frist, hats off to Mr. Menzies! You are great! As a non-Chinese, you spent 14 precious years and your own money to investigate and gather evidence in order to find the truth and also give credits to Chinese Zheng He. If someday, it proves that Zheng He is the first one to discover America, you should be remembered and respected by every Chinese as well as Zheng He.
I saw this paperback book in the book store and then realized this is the same book that somebody mentioned to me last year(but I totally ignored his comments on this book). I immidately took it and started to read it. Since opening the first a few pages, I couldn't put it down! I am a Chinese and never really into history before. At first, I did not think it would hook me, but it did. Zhen He is well known in China. Every Chinese heard about him, and knew that he had Xia Xi Yang(went westward ocean) seven times. But that's it, we don't know where exactly he went to, what he brought back from his trip. Most of his records were destoried like Mr. Menzies mentioned in the book. It seems does not make sense to non-Chinese people that Zheng He(not Christopher Columbus)discovered American. But if you think about, just like Mr. Menzies mentioned in the book, even 70 years after Zheng He's vast fleet explored the world, the ocean was still unknown to European explorers, not only unknown, but fears were also among people in those years. When I was a little child, I had read lots of Greek and Roman myth. I had read many stories of Greek myth about seamen took ocean trip and met serpent or nymphs such as the famous Greek myth "the adventures of Ulysses". Ulysses had to put wax into his ears to avoid hearing song sang by nymphs. If mariners heard their songs, they were impelled to cast themseleves into the sea to destruction. I have read quite a lot of these kind of scared stories. But if you read Chinese myth or folk stories. There is no such kind of scared stories at all. You only hear good stories about the sea creatures. For example, a shell changed to a beautiful girl during the day and help a poor boy to cook and sew and later became the boy's wife and lived happyly ever after. I am wondering, if Christopher Columbus(or Portuguese) had no map beforehand, had no big ships compared to Zheng He's fleet, and also was very superstition, if he could still went his great voyage successfully and returned home safely, that's really a big miracle!!!
Based on Ming China's power and richness, it does make sense only China had the ability to draw the map. But it would be very difficult for Mr. Menzies(or anybody) to prove it because Zheng He's voyage were not documentated(or destoried). Everybody believe that Columbus discovered American because he documentated!
I wish Mr. Menzies and anybody who can help him to gather more proof to work on this together. Again, thanks so much, Mr. Menzies. Keep up your good work. You deserve respect from all Chinese people.
Rating:
Summary: A Hit and Miss Affair
Review: Firstly I enjoyed this book and feel it deserved 5 stars from me, despite the fact that I don't entirely agree with Menzie's findings. It doesn't take too much reading of this tome for the reader to realise that Menzies has spent a seriously long time researching this book. Indeed he offers the fact that it took him over 12 years to compile. It is not time wasted. Menzies covers each of the Chinese Naval Captains in turn, theorizes about their exploits based on what information he could find, what information fit his story and finally what information he could deduce. Whilst I'm sure he was wide of the mark with a number of his theories, the sheer weight of evidence would tend to show that maybe, just maybe, Menzies is on to something here. Until a proper wreck/carved stone is uncovered/ discovered, we probably won't know just how right Menzies was. An interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: This is History? Give me space aliens!
Review: Menzies' spins his tale by a series of speculations built on conjectures resting on possibilities and underlain by wild guesses - and he then pronounces the result a certainty. Eric von Danekin showed more scholarship in making his claim that aliens built the pyramids. Immanuel Velikovski's Worlds in Collision was a masterpiece. Pseudo-science and pseudo-history are going downhill.
Rating:
Summary: Kon-Tiki Sails Again
Review: Oh, boy! This enormous example of what Samuel Eliot Morison called "moonstruck history" is a poorly edited, contradictory and irksome argument that the Chinese voyages of 1420 and following went not only to Africa, as Louise Levathes and others have documented, but circled the earth including treks to near the North and South Poles and planted colonies in North and South America. Menzies' book is a pretty good example of how easy it is to mislead people who don't know how professionals do historical and archeological work.
An example: Menzies makes a big deal about the Cherokee rose, the state flower of Georgia, which is Chinese in origin. He claims that its presence in early America proves Chinese voyages before Columbus. In fact, the rose was introduced from China in 1759 and spread widely.
Sometimes the readiness of this British Navy captain to grasp any straw, so long as it's a rice straw, borders on the crazy. His "reconstruction" of Chinese "voyages" to the Caribbean depends on the view of certain coasts being exactly the same, with harbors, sandbars and winds that never change (thus, the maps which are the majority of his "evidence" are decipherable to him because of his decades of experience as a sub captain, when professional historians never noticed these "similarities"). However, his Chinese admirals were able to sail around Greenland (in wooden-hulled junks) because the ice had melted in a warm period. Make up your mind, Menzies! If the water was one fathom lower (in his chapter on Bermuda, where the sea-concreted stones are a Chinese engineering work) then how could the view from sea level be the same, as he claims in the beginning of the book? And a sub captain sees a *different* view than a junk's lookout atop a tall mast!
This book is nonsense, I'm sorry. Louise Levathes and several other scholars have made the same judgement. Read her fine book and ignore this.
The website, with such "evidence" as urns found in Oregon (as if there were no dollar stores in Oregon to supply them) and "giant cometary impacts" as explanations for the ships sinking (of course, Europeans were too stupid to notice a huge natural disaster!) is an embarrassment.
Rating:
Summary: USA - you need to rewrite your history!
Review: The paperback edition turns the hypothesis of the hardback into reality. We are probably looking at a paradigm shift, like Darwin. The myth of the superior West is taking a probably lethal battering. If I read this correctly, the Chinese are the direct cause of the renaissance, the scientific revolution and the western imperialist expansion - we are standing on the shoulders of giants. America is the current superpower, but the sleeping dragon has awoken and is finding its huge and superb historic legacy. Wyo - ming
Chi - le
Peru Many common names from the Americas are Chinese!
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: Stunning, mind boggling, wow, wow, wow. This guy Menzies is an "ameteur" historian? Not any more. The depth and intelligence of research on this massive, complex puzzle is simply astouding. What a great, great piece of work. Sorry dead white European guys!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting premise
Review: This book attempts to explain and provide evidence that the Chinese had explored most of the World in the early 15th century, before the great European explorers did. This book was a very interesting read and provided alot of information into the period and medieval navigation. I thought Menzies brought a fresh prospective on the times and navigation during that period of history. Menzies provides a great amount of information on the great Chinese treasure fleets, and their adventures. I found the process that the Chinese used to establish longitude incredible. Having read Sobel's book 'Longitude' made this even more fascinating. However, as I got further into the book, I startted to get the feeling that Menzies was stretching the facts too much in favor of the Chinese. I think that there should have been opposing viewpoints included in the discussion. This book was very interesting and will eventually lead me to read further into this period of time both from the European and the Chinese histories.
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