Kama Sutra

Amazon.com

1491 is not so much the story of a year, as of what that year stands for: the long-debated (and often-dismissed) question of what human civilization in the Americas was like before the Europeans crashed the party. The history books most Americans were (and still are) raised on describe the continents before Columbus as a vast, underused territory, sparsely populated by primitives whose cultures would inevitably bow before the advanced technologies of the Europeans. For decades, though, among the archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others whose discoveries Charles C. Mann brings together in 1491, different stories have been emerging. Among the revelations: the first Americans may not have come over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even "timeless" natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention.

Mann is well aware that much of the history he relates is necessarily speculative, the product of pot-shard interpretation and precise scientific measurements that often end up being radically revised in later decades. But the most compelling of his eye-opening revisionist stories are among the best-founded: the stories of early American-European contact. To many of those who were there, the earliest encounters felt more like a meeting of equals than one of natural domination. And those who came later and found an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mann argues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchanging state of the native American, but the evidence of a sudden calamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic in human history, the smallpox and other diseases introduced inadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, which swept through the Americas faster than the explorers who brought it, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only a shadow of the thriving cultures that it had sustained for centuries before. --Tom Nissley

A 1491 Timeline

Europe and Asia	Dates	The Americas
	25000-35000 B.C.	Time of paleo-Indian migration to Americas from Siberia, according to genetic evidence. Groups likely traveled across the Pacific in boats.
Wheat and barley grown from wild ancestors in Sumer.	6000
	5000	In what many scientists regard as humankind's first and greatest feat of genetic engineering, Indians in southern Mexico systematically breed maize (corn) from dissimilar ancestor species.
First cities established in Sumer.	4000
	3000	The Americas' first urban complex, in coastal Peru, of at least 30 closely packed cities, each centered around large pyramid-like structures
Great Pyramid at Giza	2650
	32	First clear evidence of Olmec use of zero--an invention, widely described as the most important mathematical discovery ever made, which did not occur in Eurasia until about 600 A.D., in India (zero was not introduced to Europe until the 1200s and not widely used until the 1700s)
	800-840 A.D.	Sudden collapse of most central Maya cities in the face of severe drought and lengthy war
Vikings briefly establish first European settlements in North America.	1000	Reconstruction of Cahokia, c. 1250 A.D.* Abrupt rise of Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, the largest city north of the Rio Grande. Population estimates vary from at least 15,000 to 100,000.
Black Death devastates Europe.	1347-1351
	1398	Birth of Tlacaélel, the brilliant Mexican strategist behind the Triple Alliance (also known as the Aztec empire), which within decades controls central Mexico, then the most densely settled place on Earth.
The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.	1492	The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.
Syphilis apparently brought to Europe by Columbus's returning crew.	1493
Ferdinand Magellan departs from Spain on around-the-world voyage.	1519	Sixteenth-century Mexica drawing of the effects of smallpox** Cortes driven from Tenochtitlán, capital of the Triple Alliance, and then gains victory as smallpox, a European disease never before seen in the Americas, kills at least one of three in the empire.
	1525-1533	The smallpox epidemic sweeps into Peru, killing as much as half the population of the Inka empire and opening the door to conquest by Spanish forces led by Pizarro.
	1617	Huge areas of New England nearly depopulated by epidemic brought by shipwrecked French sailors.
English Pilgrims arrive at Patuxet, an Indian village emptied by disease, and survive on stored Indian food, renaming the village Plymouth.	1620

Kurzbeschreibung

Amazon.com

With language as colorful as a Canyonlands sunset and a perspective as pointed as a prickly pear, Cactus Ed captures the heat, mystery, and surprising bounty of desert life. Desert Solitaire is a meditation on the stark landscapes of the red-rock West, a passionate vote for wilderness, and a howling lament for the commercialization of the American outback.

Kurzbeschreibung

Kurzbeschreibung

Bali is where it all started, first in the 1930s at Kuta, then reignited with interest by the discovery of Uluwatu in the early '70s, tantalisingly portrayed to the fledgling surf travel community in the seminal film Morning of the Earth. The Bukit peninsula soon became synonymous with perfect barrels as more world-class waves were introduced to an insatiable surf world and Aussie surfers quickly bumped Bali to the top of the annual pilgrimage list. Not to be outdone by it's nearest neighbour, Java managed to trump the Bukit beauties with a wave so vast and perfectly formed, that G-Land is now the yardstick by which all waves are measured.

The Stormrider Surf Guide Kindle ebooks are just part of the worlds best selling and most respected collection of surfing guide books. The Stormrider Surf Guides come in just about every format possible including paper, Itunes App and now the Kindle edition ebooks. They are the only comprehensive colour guides to the coastlines of Europe, North America, Central American and the Caribbean, Indonesia and the Indian Ocean, South America, Africa, East Asia, The Pacific and Australia. The authoritative text includes oceanographic, environmental and cultural notes on the entire coastlines. Each guide contains numerous full colour maps and superb photos of the best waves, shot by the best photographers. All information is compiled with the help of local riders whose sensitive approach enables an accurate and knowledgeable appraisal. An essential tool for surfers searching for their perfect wave.

REVIEW
?Is there a more surfer-friendly playground in the world than the Indian Ocean? Indonesia is surely the focus, and the numerous chains of islands surrounded by world-class reefs play a strong supporting cast.
The Stormrider Surf Guides continue to be the pinnacle of surf travel guide books, and this latest edition is no different. It explores tons of places you?ve heard of and lots you haven?t. If you?re planning on taking a trip to anywhere in the Indian Ocean at any point in time, you?ll want to grab a copy of this ? it?ll be one of the best purchases for travel you make.?
Reviewed by Transworld surf from the USA

REVIEW
?Some surf guides just don?t cut the mustard. This one however, cuts the mustard, spreads it on some toast and tantalises your hydrocephalic taste buds until you can?t take it anymore and book a ticket._We see a lot of surf guides come and go. Most don?t demand much attention, but the Low Pressure books go an extra mile. The photos and words are current and the entire package does itself justice._Get packing! ?
Reviewed by Drift Surfing Magazine from UK

Kurzbeschreibung

Bali is where it all started, first in the 1930s at Kuta, then reignited with interest by the discovery of Uluwatu in the early '70s, tantalisingly portrayed to the fledgling surf travel community in the seminal film Morning of the Earth. The Bukit peninsula soon became synonymous with perfect barrels as more world-class waves were introduced to an insatiable surf world and Aussie surfers quickly bumped Bali to the top of the annual pilgrimage list. Not to be outdone by it's nearest neighbour, Java managed to trump the Bukit beauties with a wave so vast and perfectly formed, that G-Land is now the yardstick by which all waves are measured.

The Stormrider Surf Guide Kindle ebooks are just part of the worlds best selling and most respected collection of surfing guide books. The Stormrider Surf Guides come in just about every format possible including paper, Itunes App and now the Kindle edition ebooks. They are the only comprehensive colour guides to the coastlines of Europe, North America, Central American and the Caribbean, Indonesia and the Indian Ocean, South America, Africa, East Asia, The Pacific and Australia. The authoritative text includes oceanographic, environmental and cultural notes on the entire coastlines. Each guide contains numerous full colour maps and superb photos of the best waves, shot by the best photographers. All information is compiled with the help of local riders whose sensitive approach enables an accurate and knowledgeable appraisal. An essential tool for surfers searching for their perfect wave.

REVIEW
?Is there a more surfer-friendly playground in the world than the Indian Ocean? Indonesia is surely the focus, and the numerous chains of islands surrounded by world-class reefs play a strong supporting cast.
The Stormrider Surf Guides continue to be the pinnacle of surf travel guide books, and this latest edition is no different. It explores tons of places you?ve heard of and lots you haven?t. If you?re planning on taking a trip to anywhere in the Indian Ocean at any point in time, you?ll want to grab a copy of this ? it?ll be one of the best purchases for travel you make.?
Reviewed by Transworld surf from the USA

REVIEW
?Some surf guides just don?t cut the mustard. This one however, cuts the mustard, spreads it on some toast and tantalises your hydrocephalic taste buds until you can?t take it anymore and book a ticket._We see a lot of surf guides come and go. Most don?t demand much attention, but the Low Pressure books go an extra mile. The photos and words are current and the entire package does itself justice._Get packing! ?
Reviewed by Drift Surfing Magazine from UK