When It Changed

Recently we have received a new book by Charles C. Mann, 1491 : new revelations of the Americas before Columbus. This is only one of a number of books approaching North American history from the point of view of what was here--and who was here--as the Europeans arrived and spread across the continent. Mann seems to have little to say about the Plains Indians, but another book set further west and later in time certainly remedies that omission: One vast winter count : the Native American West before Lewis and Clark, by Colin G. Calloway. We haven't nibbled on 1491 yet, but can testify that One Vast Winter Count is readable and fascinating.
       An entertaining and curious glimpse of first contact on the east coast is Creatures of Empire : how domestic animals transformed early America by Virginia DeJohn Anderson. Or a different sort of first contact story, Lewis and Clark among the grizzlies : legend and legacy in the American West by Paul Schullery.
       Another thread is books about Native Americans and the National Park lands. A couple of examples are Restoring a presence : American Indians and Yellowstone National Park by Peter Nabokov and Lawrence Loendorf; Indian country, God's country : Native Americans and the national parks by Philip Burnham; and the rather stuffy-looking Inhabited wilderness : Indians, Eskimos, and national parks in Alaska by Theodore Catton.
       We could go on indefinitely, wandering from one of these books to lists of others by clicking on their subject headings. But this might be enough to get you started.