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In this landmark work on the Anasazi tribes of the Southwest, naturalist Craig Childs dives head on into the mysteries of this vanished people.


The various tribes that made up the Anasazi people converged on Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) during the 11th century to create a civilization hailed as "the Las Vegas of its day," a flourishing cultural center that attracted pilgrims from far and wide, and a vital crossroads of the prehistoric world. By the 13th century, however, Chaco's vibrant community had disappeared without a trace.


Was it drought? Pestilence? War? Forced migration, mass murder or suicide? Conflicting theories have abounded for years, capturing the North American imagination for eons.

Join Craig Childs as he draws on the latest scholarly research, as well as a lifetime of exploration in the forbidden landscapes of the American Southwest, to shed new light on this compelling mystery. He takes us from Chaco Canyon to the highlands of Mesa Verde, to the Mongollon Rim; to a contemporary Zuni community where tribal elders maintain silence about the fate of their Lost Others; and to the largely unexplored foothills of the Sierra Madre in Mexico, where abundant remnants of Anasazi culture lie yet to be uncovered.



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Price: $7.53 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed -- due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance.

Kim MacQuarrie lived in Peru for five years and became fascinated by the Incas and the history of the Spanish conquest. Drawing on both native and Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. MacQuarrie also relates the story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, of how Machu Picchu was discovered, and of how a trio of colorful American explorers only recently discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba, hidden for centuries in the Amazon.

This authoritative, exciting history is among the most powerful and important accounts of the culture of the South American Indians and the Spanish Conquest..
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A stirring tale of adventure and tragedy

"They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that it would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them. I was attentive and labored to find out if there was any gold."

With these portentous words, Christopher Columbus described one of his first encounters with Native Americans on the island of Guanahani, which he had named San Salvador and claimed for Spain the day before. In Columbus in the Americas, bestselling author William Least Heat-Moon reveals that Columbus's subsequent dealings with the cultures he encountered not only did considerable immediate harm, but also set the pattern of behavior for those who followed him.

Based on the logbook of Columbus and numerous other firsthand accounts of his four voyages to the New World, this vividly detailed history also examines the strengths and weaknesses of Columbus as a navigator, explorer, and leader. It recounts dramatic events such as the destruction of Fortress Navidad, the very first European settlement in the New World; a pitched battle in northern Panama with the native Guaymi people; and an agonizing year Columbus and his men spent marooned on a narrow spit of land in southern Jamaica.

Filled with stories of triumph and tragedy, courage and villainy, Columbus in the Americas offers a balanced yet unflinching portrait of the most famous and controversial explorer in history.

TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time..
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A special illustrated edition of Hiram Bingham's classic work captures all the magnificence and mystery of the amazing archeological sites he uncovered. Early in the 20th century, Bingham ventured into the wild and then unknown country of the Eastern Peruvian Andes--and in 1911 came upon the fabulous Inca city that made him famous: Machu Picchu. In the space of one short season he went on to discover two more lost cities, including Vitcos, where the last Incan Emperor was assassinated.
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Price: $7.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Explains in a larger perspective the true meaning of the calendrical system of the Maya. The book reflects one of the greatest changes in human thinking ever to have taken place, one that unifies Western and Eastern thinking. The book provides a common perspective on the emergence of all human religions and schools of thought. As the true meaning of the calendar is solved it becomes clear that we are living in a creation that evolves according to a pre-set schedule provided by the Mayan calendar, aiming at a completion on 28 October 2011. The basis for a prophetic science is now returning. The message of this book is crucial to everyone alive: human life has a higher purpose and we may all live so as to fulfil this..
Price: $15.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Does Colorado's Grand Canyon hide an ancient city found by a Smithsonian Institution photographer?
Did the Vikings beat Columbus to the New World using a fiber-optic navigational instrument?
Who built a colossal water reservoir in Iowa long before the first European settlers arrived?
What secret have the "Giants of the California Desert" preserved for more than a thousand years?

These are just some of the intriguing questions posed and answered by expert researchers in Unearthing Ancient America. They go on to tackle a broad variety of archaeological enigmas shunned as too heretical for consideration by conventional scholars--a Roman figurine found off the New Jersey coast, North African gold in Illinois from a long-vanished kingdom, an Egyptian knife removed from a centuries-old tree in California, a fifth century Christian church in Connecticut, a prehistoric harbor underwater in the Bahamas, Easter Island's cultural connections with pre-modern Japan, and voyagers to Maine from Stone Age Scotland.

Unearthing Ancient America contains a wealth of fresh, occasionally suppressed evidence documenting the tremendous impact made on our continent by overseas visitors hundreds and even thousands of years before Columbus. The disclosures presented here re-write the prehistory of our country and provide a dramatic panorama of the past you never imagined before.

The distinguished list of contributing writers to Unearthing Ancient America includes:
* Wayne May, founder and publisher of Ancient American magazine
* Gunnar Thompson, PhD, author of American Discovery
* Nobuhiro Yoshida, language professor from the University of Kyushu
* William Donato, the world's leading authority on the "Bimini Road"
* David Hatcher Childress, founder of The World Explorers Club and head of Adventures Unlimited Press.
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You will be fascinated by this fast-paced, objective history of the world from a perspective you have never imagined. Current events will come into focus in the back drop of 1,400 years of inconceivable yet true events and conflicts. Thousands of books, documents and articles have been researched over several years in preparation for this book. In 2006, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress. He swore in on a Qur'an. Most Americans know little about the Qur'an, who wrote it and how it spread. Mohammed, who had 15 wives, fought in scores of raids and battles, even cutting off the heads of 700 Jews. Within one hundred years of his death, his followers conquered North Africa, the Holy Land, Persia, Spain - from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Read how Sultan Mehmet II conquered the 1000 year old Byzantine capital of Constantinople - How Jefferson sent Marines to capture the Muslim Barbary pirate port of Tripoli - Woodrow Wilson tried to save millions of Armenian Christians killed in Turkey. You will not be the same after you have learned what every American needs to know about the Qur'an..
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Forty years ago, an amateur prehistorian discovered an engraved mastodon bone near Mexico City, showing a virtual bestiary from the Ice Age. Harvard University took notice and excavated nearby sites around the Valsequillo Reservoir. They found perfectly buried kill sites with the oldest spearheads in the world. Some archaeologists postulated their age at 40,000 years, three times older than the official 12,000-year-old date for the first Americans. Then the shocker--United States Geology Survey (USGS) geologists came up with the date of 250,000 years old!

Even though these dates were published in peer-reviewed geological journals, archaeologists wrote off the geologists, saying they were mistaken and that their dates were too ridiculously old. Archaeologists never returned to the site and curiosity died out. Soon after, this once world-class archaeology region became off-limits for official research, a "professional forbidden zone."

The Valsequillo discoveries were legendary, but regarded as "fringe" by professional archaeologists. Why this radical turn-about? What was found that was so unspeakable, so impossible? What happened to these artifacts--America's earliest art and spearheads, and why don't archaeologists seem to care? In the new book, The First American, archaeologist Christopher Hardaker tries to unearth the mystery.

The book details the events of the discovery and its subsequent dismissal, as well as the attempt in 2001 by a wealthy outsider to find the truth about the Valsequillo discoveries. Included in The First American are photos of the original artifacts, and excerpts from reports, letters, and memos from the site participants themselves.

Archaeologists will once again be forced to ask the same question their mentors asked: Are we too in love with our own theories to ignore the evidence of science yet again? And readers will hear the real story of the great Valsequillo discoveries, the greatest story of early American man never told..
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