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kahawa's review
4.0
3.5 stars.
This was pretty well written and informative. We need more books on this topic. It felt a bit more like a lecture than a book. Clarke made a lot of claims, and it wasn't apparent from the audiobook whether he was referencing those, because he didn't mention sources very much. I'd like to look into some of those things more. The last half hour was quite the polemic for black nationalism. There was good and bad in that, but some of it felt like a call to divide people into their racial categories. I don't understand how Clarke's vision could be accomplished without hyper-segregating people and encouraging the different 'races' to avoid mixing and interaction. Something to think about...
This was pretty well written and informative. We need more books on this topic. It felt a bit more like a lecture than a book. Clarke made a lot of claims, and it wasn't apparent from the audiobook whether he was referencing those, because he didn't mention sources very much. I'd like to look into some of those things more. The last half hour was quite the polemic for black nationalism. There was good and bad in that, but some of it felt like a call to divide people into their racial categories. I don't understand how Clarke's vision could be accomplished without hyper-segregating people and encouraging the different 'races' to avoid mixing and interaction. Something to think about...
aerlenbach's review
5.0
Wow. This book goes HARD. I first got a better understanding about the true evils of Christopher Columbus after reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond (1997), "A People’s History of the United States” (2004 edition) by Howard Zinn, "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014), and "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong " by James W. Loewen (2008). All fantastic books I would highly recommend.
So I already knew he was a bad dude. But because it’s Indigenous Peoples Day weekend, I figured I’d read a short book just about him. But this book…this book cranks it to 11 at the jump. It does not hold its punches against Columbus, the church, colonialists, capitalists, anyone. It’s awesome. Reading through the author’s Wikipedia page and watching some videos of interviews with him, it’s no wonder he’d write something this unabashedly provocative. He was an amazing professor and historian that tried to right the wrongs of the US’s Eurocentric historical understanding.
Christopher Columbus was a bad guy. He personally participated in the genocides of countless people on two different continents. Don’t take my word for it. You can read his own journal to see how ruthlessly evil he was. He didn’t discover shit. You cannot discover places where people already exist. Furthermore, he didn’t know he “discovered” a new place, AND he wasn’t the first European to show up. He destroyed more cultures than he helped create.
What he did do was spearhead (and personally participate in) the genocides of the natives of North America and the genocides of native Africans. He was ruthless and cruel. He set into motion the beginnings of capitalism, commodifying human beings and slaughtering those who disobey.
I’ll be checking out some more stuff by this author and some books he recommended in his interviews and in this book. His call for Pan-Africanism is really interesting and a subject I know disappointingly little about.
Highly recommended to anyone who wants to actually understand this history of the founding of the USA and not the whitewashed bullshit they teach in school.
So I already knew he was a bad dude. But because it’s Indigenous Peoples Day weekend, I figured I’d read a short book just about him. But this book…this book cranks it to 11 at the jump. It does not hold its punches against Columbus, the church, colonialists, capitalists, anyone. It’s awesome. Reading through the author’s Wikipedia page and watching some videos of interviews with him, it’s no wonder he’d write something this unabashedly provocative. He was an amazing professor and historian that tried to right the wrongs of the US’s Eurocentric historical understanding.
Christopher Columbus was a bad guy. He personally participated in the genocides of countless people on two different continents. Don’t take my word for it. You can read his own journal to see how ruthlessly evil he was. He didn’t discover shit. You cannot discover places where people already exist. Furthermore, he didn’t know he “discovered” a new place, AND he wasn’t the first European to show up. He destroyed more cultures than he helped create.
What he did do was spearhead (and personally participate in) the genocides of the natives of North America and the genocides of native Africans. He was ruthless and cruel. He set into motion the beginnings of capitalism, commodifying human beings and slaughtering those who disobey.
I’ll be checking out some more stuff by this author and some books he recommended in his interviews and in this book. His call for Pan-Africanism is really interesting and a subject I know disappointingly little about.
Highly recommended to anyone who wants to actually understand this history of the founding of the USA and not the whitewashed bullshit they teach in school.
nightswim78's review
4.75
"African people have been under siege for over 3,000 years for the same reason they are under siege right now: African people have always had and still have something other people want, think they can't do without, and don't want to pay for!" / "You start with your community and with yourself and then you will begin to see and understand revolutionary change." / "I think you should start with a mirror. You looked into the mirror until you like what you see, and then you say: My revolution starts with me and my memorial to the people in the Middle Passage starts right now."
A must-read.
A must-read.
mikusa's review
4.0
3.5 stars.
This was pretty well written and informative. We need more books on this topic. It felt a bit more like a lecture than a book. Clarke made a lot of claims, and it wasn't apparent from the audiobook whether he was referencing those, because he didn't mention sources very much. I'd like to look into some of those things more. The last half hour was quite the polemic for black nationalism. There was good and bad in that, but some of it felt like a call to divide people into their racial categories. I don't understand how Clarke's vision could be accomplished without hyper-segregating people and encouraging the different 'races' to avoid mixing and interaction. Something to think about...
This was pretty well written and informative. We need more books on this topic. It felt a bit more like a lecture than a book. Clarke made a lot of claims, and it wasn't apparent from the audiobook whether he was referencing those, because he didn't mention sources very much. I'd like to look into some of those things more. The last half hour was quite the polemic for black nationalism. There was good and bad in that, but some of it felt like a call to divide people into their racial categories. I don't understand how Clarke's vision could be accomplished without hyper-segregating people and encouraging the different 'races' to avoid mixing and interaction. Something to think about...
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