Books like Ancient America — picked by fans

I devoured this book—startling insights and descriptions of pre-Columbian societies.

I study this stuff, and there were many, many things I’ve never heard of, mostly in Central and South America. Like? Like that two of the original cradles of civilization (i.e., Mesopotamia, Egypt, China) were in Mexico and Peru. Huge cities in the Amazon.

We still know far too little about the people that were here before Columbus, their civilizations, engineering, language, and writing. What’s now the U.S. was no wilderness: the forests were managed, the rivers were managed, the prairie was managed. The Americas were heavily settled. They terraformed both continents.

This book blew my mind.

I had no idea there were so many, and such vast, ancient structures throughout mid-America. It showed me how very little I knew about America, and how very wrong the standard American pre-Columbian narrative was.

What's truly sad is that the vast majority of these ancient monuments have been deliberately destroyed. They were an inconvenient truth: that this was not a virgin continent ripe for exploitation but a thoroughly settled land inhabited for thousands of years. We were lied to!

First of all, I love that name. What the Fowke (a pseudonym)!

But mostly, this book opened a window for me and showed me how big, how dramatic, and how many ancient sites there were in Missouri. Everywhere! I was amazed to find so many in the county in which I live, Boone.

But, again, what makes this book sad is that most of these sites are gone, looted, bulldozed over, pilfered, vanished. Yes, deliberately. We clearly had no respect for the ancients. And we still don’t. A site in Fenton was recently destroyed for a Walmart.

Will the civilization after us destroy all our monuments? Hate to say this, but I hope so. Our hubris decrees it. 

I love Chapman.

He might not be the godfather of Missouri archaeology, but he sure was the dean. This was his whole life! This book is by far the most concise, encyclopedic book of ancient Missouri, written in clear language, with great maps by his wife and research partner Eleanor Chapman.

You don’t have to have 14 PhDs and a language translator to read him. He’s an amateur’s dream, and I am very much an amateur! It's impossible to write about ancient Missouri without Chapman; he’s really indispensable, and I lean very heavily on these books, not just as a guide to what was there, but how to think about it, too.

He’s not mystical or magical, like too many American archeologists today. He just reports what he sees as the facts, ma'am. What I found tragic, though, is that a lot of the sites he covers have been deliberately… show more.

As much as the current attacks on DEI may feel new or recent, the use of education and schooling to colonize and assimilate goes all the way back to the founding myths of this country and the aims of stealing land from Indigenous peoples and labor from enslaved Black communities.

This book highlights those histories across time as motivated not by personal malice or differences in cultural beliefs but by settler-colonial economic gain. Those moves were rationalized by the notion of European “civilization” as superior and enforced through violence to erase Native people, cultures, and sovereignty.

The final chapter reminds us that “the past is present” in the fights over who gets to tell the histories and what narratives get valorized or erased; the grab for land, resources, and economic power that underlies the current attacks; and in the ongoing resistance and creativity of Indigenous nations and other minoritized communities… show more.

When I was a little boy, all I wanted to be was an Indian. I have always had an open heart for the underdog, but these dark-skinned people seemed like masters of all woods lore. I wanted those skills for my own.

Now I see the friction between modern Native Americans and modern whites as inevitable, challenging, and wrought with a rotten history of broken promises. When a friendship between a native and a non-native can transcend that history to form a bond strong enough to die for, I am inspired.

I have always enjoyed poetry and this book introduces simple couplets to children while telling a sweet story of loving Asian parents who welcome a new child. Geared to very young children, the artwork can tell the story without someone reading it to them, but the lyrical words just add to the beauty of the message. 

Barry Lopez is also an author that defies choosing among his many great books about nature, including the renown Of Wolves and Men. Less known is his collection of sixty-eight tales of Old Man Coyote, the Trickster, carefully gathered from forty-two Native American tribes. One might understandably take issue with reading a white man’s version of Native American stories, but give Barry a chance to explain himself in the introduction to the book. Of course, nothing can replace the great oral tradition of Native American storytelling, but short of the real thing, this collection will help you understand the wit and wisdom of the Trickster character.

Andrés Reséndez estimates that between 2.4 and 4.9 million Indigenous Americans were enslaved between 1492 and 1900, a statistic that will shock many people, as the history of Native enslavement in the Americas barely seems to have touched the popular imagination.

This book, accessibly written but based on meticulous research, is absolutely essential reading, as it returns this ‘other slavery’ to its rightful place in our understandings of Indigenous, American, and global history.

What Calloway does for Washington, Wallace does for Jefferson. Even more than Washington, Jefferson talked one game and played another. He could be splendidly eloquent on how much he wanted the Indian nations to become Americans, yet that could only happen, in Jefferson’s mind, if they surrendered their identity as Indians. If anything, the situation was even worse than Wallace suggests, as I point out in detail in my book on William Wells. While there is much to admire about Jefferson, his Indian policy shows how idealism can serve as a front for blatant exploitation and near genocide.