Chapter 2, Summary and Analysis

"1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus", disputes the canonization of America's first great hero. All twelve textbooks fill many pages about the watershed year 1492, with erroneous or unverifiable material. They overlook many pre-Columbian visitors and fail to analyze the 15th-century cultural changes that make Europeans respond to Columbus' "discovery". The Renaissance and Crusades are rightly mentioned but not put in context; while wrongly, Columbus and his sponsors are portrayed as humanists. Europe's population is shown as expanding and in need of increased trade and the Turks block the spice routes - maintaining the false archetype of a vaguely threatening Islam.

The Age of Exploration is second only to the agricultural revolution in its importance to humanity, because it opens 500 years of European domination. The textbooks, however, are vague on why it happens. They omit how it is facilitated by advances in...