Prehistory of the Americas

Rating:
Summary: Prehistory of the Americas (Fiedel)
Review: This is a wide-ranging summary of the entire prehistory of North, Central, and South America. This book does a good job at giving a broad and general introduction of the entire scope of prehistory for these continents. It is a cheap and relatively solid reference book for at an introductory level for the non-specialist.

The text, however, has many drawbacks. It contains very few illustrations and the ones that are in the book are black-and-white line drawings. For a subject like archaeology, maps, pictures of distincitive artifact types, and some just plain visiually appealing pictures are necessary to illustrate points and keep the reader interested. This book is written at a fine general level, but is too dry for most students let alone the general public to enjoy and retain what they've read.

The biggest attractions of this book are it's price and the fact that it covers a wide area in time and space and subject matter. However, it does not make a good coffee table book, a fun pleasure reading book, nor a really effective textbook. There are other books that cover subsets of the subject matter extremely well.

There are other books that cover the same range and depth as this particular book. One that comes to mind is better illustrated than Fiedel's book and easier to read, but is outdated and outright wrong (whereas Fiedel can be counted on to be more accurate). Likewise, the other books that cover the entiretly of North, Central and South American seem to have some flaw. So, this book is flawed. But so are comparable texts. Picking a book on New World prehistory is somewhat like picking a spouse -- you have to decide which one to go with by looking at which flaws you would rather live with.