This book is ridiculous, it should be titled "How Churchill is Responsible for Everything for Simpletons". Patrick Buchanan in his pathological hatred of Churchill attempts to lay blame at the latter's feet for all the mistakes that happened in the last one hundred and ten years. Actually he does not reserve his vitriol for Churchill alone, but roundly condemns the British establishment as a whole. So why for simpletons? Buchanan feels that every salient point is worth reiterating at least once, just in case we were not paying attention the first time. Actually his writing style is quite easy to read, that is not dense, so reiteration is really unnecessary.

In his attempts to paint Churchill and the British establishment in as negative light as possible he virtually becomes an apologist for Hitler. Poor Adolf, actually all he wanted to do was crush Russia, but those stupid British seemed unable to fathom this and had the bad taste to declare war on Germany. He even goes as far to suggest that without British intervention the holocaust may never have occurred. He seems quite happy to ignore the fact that Hitler was a psychopathic madman bent on destruction. How far does he take this line of thought? In the final chapter he suggests that somehow Churchill was responsible for the Iraq invasion because George Bush had a bust of him in his office. This really does give Churchill too much credit, Bush was quite capable of making bad decisions without Churchill's divine guidance.

The reason behind this polemic may well be found in Buchanan's name. The Irish have never had much love for the British and have generally found Churchill to be anathema. Rightly or wrongly they tend to blame him for the scourge of the Black and Tans. In many ways it is a pity that Patrick Buchanan took such an extreme view with this book because there is considerable good information mixed in with the diatribe, but in the end it simply becomes an annoying read.

Having read 1491 I find myself in disagreement with Mr Bass. I am neither archiologist or anthropologist but do have a keen interest in history. I feel that Mr Mann makes a good case for the North American Indian population having an impact on their environment beyond that previously thought. It is interesting that recently a University of Calgary professor was on the news, announcing that in his research he had come to the conclusion that the plains Indians were far more numerous and socially organised than previously thought. He felt that the traditional image of small groups of nomadic stone age hunters had to be re-examined. He fell short of suggesting that these same groups were probably the remanents of the largely inadvertant genocide that saw, what is likely, the largest human die off in history. The implication has to be there and Charles Mann addresses this time and again. 1491 is a compelling and worthy read and there is no compunction to accept every argument as gospel, even Mann provides the material with acknowlegment that there are opposing points of view. As for Mr Bass why as a member of the USDA why is he writing to amazon.ca?