A break-neck, intellectual joy ride very much in the spirit of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (and significantly more fun then “Collapse”), I found it enthralling, and a page turner.

To his credit Mann manages to represent multiple confliciting views (even wrong ones alas!) in a balanced nuanced manner (guarenteed to drive experts crazy), delicate and fraught given how political charged the study of history in the Americas is.

These grand generalist histories, with millenial sweep fill the void of “Just So” stories for the 21st century, explaing the big bad world in an engaging, entertaining way. Pure candy if you’re into that kind of thing.