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To get an excellent non-fiction book, you need a great topic and a skilled writer. The "quest to revive the woolly mammoth" is a great topic (that's the reason I purchased the book). The author must have a reasonable ability to write the story compellingly.

This book didn't make it to the "excellence" level. I'm not sure if it even reached the "decent" level. What is missing is sincere passion, creativity. The book is a collection of stereotypes about scientists and about the craziness of genius people. With Ben Mezrich, the author, everything becomes a forced adventure, even when it's not. On a scale of one to ten, everything in the book is at level 10 of excitement. Ben is not interested in building a connection between the reader and the characters of the story. He believes that creativity means telling everything as super exciting, super exceptional. He is wrong. The result is a boring book that slowly and tiredly flows from one page to the next, generating in the reader more frustration than curiosity.

Pare impossibile che le scuole raramente menzionino questo importantissimo evento della storia locale valtellinese. Un evento che non solo dovrebbe insegnare a tutti noi a diffidare delle categorie "buoni" e "cattivi", ma che aiuterebbe anche a capire le ragioni della decadenza economica della Valtellina, decadenza che il Sacro Macello ha causato innescando una serie lunghissima di guerre, dominazioni e devastazioni. Da terra ricca, culturalmente e religiosamente libera, la valle si trasformò nel giro di pochi anni in un territorio abitato solo da nobili decaduti e contadini impoveriti. La popolazione si ridusse da oltre 150 mila abitanti all'inizio del 1600 a soli soli 40 mila dopo il passaggio dei Lanzichenecchi. Leggendo questo libro riscopriamo una terra che sotto la dominazione elvetica ospitava un vivace dibattito culturale e religioso, pubblicava trattati filosofici e religiosi, intratteneva commerci con l'Europa e il resto dell'italia. Di tutto questo, nel volgere di pochi anni rimase ben poco. La causa primaria è chiaramente identificata da Cesare Cantù nel Sacro Macello di Valtellina e negli eventi che a cascata ne seguirono, indotti certamente da quella ignobile e feroce strage.

Una lettura revisionista e giustificazionista dei fatti, promossa principalmente da bigotti cattolici, sta provando e riscrivere questo triste momento di storia come una rivolta dei valtellinesi verso gli oppressori elvetici, dimenticandosi che le vittime del macello furono quasi esclusivamente valtellinesi. I carnefici non si limitarono ai protestanti, ma infierirono anche su quei pochi cattolici che tentavano di proteggere i riformati.

Il libro di Cesare Cantù, anche se chiaramente scritto da un cattolico, è ricco di fatti oggettivi e offre al lettore l'opportunità di farsi un'opinione interpretando i fatti e collegandoli a formare un quadro ragionevolmente completo di quel periodo storico. La lettura è inizialmente difficile a causa di un italiano arcaico e accademico (dell'ottocento) ma presto ci si abitua e le pagine scorrono veloci arricchendo il lettori con nuovi fatti, dettagli e dati importanti.

After a few years sitting on my shelves, in the last couple of weeks, I started and finished the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. It’s an iconic and popular book, with thousands and thousands of online reviews, so it’s tough for me to add anything new to the conversation.

In this book review, I would state my impressions and thoughts without going over the content of the book.

First of all, let me say that this is a critical book. It tells a piece of American history that has mostly been hidden to the average American. We all know that history is usually told and shaped by the winners. Thanks to this book, we have access to a different version of history. This version is coming from the native Americans’ perspective, from the people who lost the war, although the author is not a Native American. It’s the story of a war Indians didn’t initiate, they didn’t want, and that took the lives of the majority of them.

Ths book goes through a long list of conflicts between mostly peaceful Indian tribes and the expanding American population. Sometimes the pressure comes from miners, other times from farmers, or the builders of the railway. Every single time, the political establishment and the military support the aggressions of the Indians and their killing or imprisonment. As we all know, the government of the United States forced the few surviving Native Americans into small reservations. Indian Reservations were established in areas so inhospitable and hard to cultivate that did not attract any interest from the colons or the gold miners. The list of Indian-American conflicts is also a list of treaties that Americans always violated to take advantage of the native people.

The greed for land, natural resources, and easy money was the main drive pushing colons and miners to the west. The immense and unprecedented land grab didn’t stop until the last piece of valuable land was under the control of the whites.

If there is a lesson we can learn from those tragic historical events and the genocide of the Native Americans is that the greed, the real engine of the capitalistic system, only stops when it runs out of resources to grab or steal and to convert into money.

I see this book and the tragic story of the Native Americans as a metaphor for the current struggle of those trying to save our planet form the exploitation by the capitalistic system. In the 1800 century, Americans colons and business people didn’t stop until they had full control of the natural resources and territories of Native Americans. Similarly, today’s capitalistic system will not stop until our planet resources are exhausted, even if this means to push global warming to a level that puts us, humans, in danger of extinction.