1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

I think we know by now that what they taught us in school was…hmm…not always accurate. 1491 is the first book that opened my eyes to just how not accurate. Reporting from archaeology, anthropology, genetics, and ecology, Charles C. Mann upends the European narrative of the Americas as sparsely inhabited wilderness. In facts, tens of millions of people lived there, built cities, engineered landscapes, managing forests with fire, creating fertile soils like Amazonian terra preta, and developed complex civilizations from the Amazon to the Mississippi Valley. If you want one book to expand your take on the once-called New World, this is it.