Betsy

We loved this book. Follett is a straight forward and hugely inventive story teller. The characters are on the broad end but totally engaging. It is wonderful to have history tied in with human lives you care about, made up or not. Familiar and not familiar events from World War I are mixed in with infidelity, loyalty, class, bravery, stupidity and love of Russian, German, English, and American characters. And Welsh, lest we forget. Talk of " the sweep of history". John Lee populates this world with individual voices that become instantly recognizable. He is a wizard. I am crushed that Book 2 is not done yet. I will be first in line in 2012 when Audible puts it out.

Changes your Worldview. Here is a lot of the dark matter that our school history texts never mentioned. Forget kings and statesmen; here are the real players: the lowly worm, the tiny bacteria, the odd plant, the parasite and a whole cast of greedy, stupid, and heroic humans all playing their gigantic parts in interweaving threads of change, growth and destruction. You will never view history the same after this. And you will talk about it until your friends either kill you or read it themselves.

1491- the same astonishing kind of information looking backwards from 1492. What was really here in the American Continent.