Often people describe Native Americans as people who live in harmony with their environment. Shepard Krech somewhat dispels this idea in The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. Following up on that topic is a collection of essays edited by Michael Harkin and David Lewis, Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian. Two books by Charles Mann are much broader in scope concerning the native inhabitants of the Americas. In 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Mann considers what the Americas were like before the arrival of the Europeans. In his follow-up work, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Mann shows that the passage between Europe and the Americas was more like a freeway than a one-way road from Europe.
