On Savage Shores
How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe
AN ECONOMIST AND SMITHSONIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A landmark work of narrative history that shatters our previous Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery by telling the story of the Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492
We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the "Old World" encountered the "New", when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others—enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders—the reverse was true: they discovered Europe.
For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of…
$25.99
October 15, 2024
CAROLINE DODDS PENNOCK is one of the world’s leading authorities on the Aztecs. Trained at Oxford, she is senior lecturer in international history at the University of Sheffield. Her study of Aztec human sacrifice, Bonds of Blood, won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize in 2008. She has appeared on history series for the BBC, Netflix, and the Science Channel, and has written for BBC History Magazine, History Today, and Scientific American.
