Complete Idiot's Guide to Native American History

A basically a glance at everything from pre-columbian to the present. Obviously, this can be broken down into 1000s of subtopics. It's a good introductory book to the basic aspects of Native American studies. The tone set by Fleming is obviously a native perspective. That's great, as we already have plenty of white perspectives. Regardless, some of the things he says are objectionable, but i highly doubt any of the facts are false. Ironically though, some of the things in this book are claimed false by other books. That's just the nature of this topic. This book is best to be accompanied by other books. It's difficult finding accurate information on this subject though. It's best to stay away from scientific and anthropological books, which can be very inaccurate and biased.

This book is as complete as any single volume can be in spanning Native American History. It covers terminology, law, and culture as well as an account of the United States government's treatment of Native Peoples. And it does so without belaboring the obvious, that killing people and stealing their land is wrong. In fact, the author was restrained and in no single spot that I can recall did he resort to outright moralizing. Instead, he remained fairly neutral, making the topic approachable. I would reccomend this book to any literate person.