mozzieslayer5000's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This book is wonderful. Childs somehow seamlessly intertwines his own journey through America with that of those first people to travel there, creating a highly education but also deeply human exploration of the peopling of the Americas. Anyone interested in history, anthropology, or doing some good, soul-deep self-reflection should pick this one up for a read. Something about it changed my whole life.
ptrevs's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I could see what the author was trying to do for this book, but it didn’t quite hit the mark. Basically it’s half first person adventure travelogue, half well-researched and well-informed pop history. Unfortunately they don’t quite cross over as well as the author was trying to do - it basically boils down to “imagine if there was a lake and mammoths here”
- cool the first time, a little repetitive after. This isn’t a bad book by any means, but it just didn’t all fit together.
- cool the first time, a little repetitive after. This isn’t a bad book by any means, but it just didn’t all fit together.
plaidpladd's review
5.0
Count megafauna as one of my interests now and forever! I really liked this book. It's partly the history of the earliest humans in North America and partly the author's travels to those same sites (mostly on foot or by kayak) and how they have changed in the last 15,000 years. The subject matter is really interesting, and the writing is very well-done. The parts about Florida made me vaguely homesick even though nothing described is pleasant ("Snakes dropping out of trees? Lol, yeah, you're gonna get snakes dropping out of trees"). Also I'm really pleased to know about the oldest-known human poop in North America.
tropic_anaaa's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
socraticgadfly's review
3.0
I was torn between 3 and 4 stars, and ultimately went with 3 as a reaction to a claim early in the editorial blurb:
No, Childs does no such thing. "Clovis-first" has LONG been dead, unless you're Rip Van Winkle. Stories about places like Monte Verde in Chile, affirming the findings, were being written 15 years before this book.
Otherwise, the book itself? It's a 4-star as a personal journal and things that go along with it. It's a 3-star, if that, as insightful about migrations from either Asia or Europe to the Americas. (And, the more I think about it, it might not hit that 3rd star fully. As a result, I did NOT put it on my "anthropology and archaeology" shelf, only my "travel" one.) It's also a bunch of magazine and journal articles stitched into a book, and even more than in some such cased, editing to "smooth the stitching together" is limited at best.
In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era.
No, Childs does no such thing. "Clovis-first" has LONG been dead, unless you're Rip Van Winkle. Stories about places like Monte Verde in Chile, affirming the findings, were being written 15 years before this book.
Otherwise, the book itself? It's a 4-star as a personal journal and things that go along with it. It's a 3-star, if that, as insightful about migrations from either Asia or Europe to the Americas. (And, the more I think about it, it might not hit that 3rd star fully. As a result, I did NOT put it on my "anthropology and archaeology" shelf, only my "travel" one.) It's also a bunch of magazine and journal articles stitched into a book, and even more than in some such cased, editing to "smooth the stitching together" is limited at best.