African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
415 p, This comprehensive volume takes the reader through more than 500 years of Caribbean history, beginning with Columbus's arrival in the Bahamas in 1492. This revised and updated edition, with new chapters that reflect the islands' most recent social, economic, and political developments, features maps, charts, tables, and photographs.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
324 p, "Since Columbus landed in the Bahamas 500 years ago, the history of the Caribbean has been marked by European domination and the ongoing struggle of both native and immigrant islanders for political and economic autonomy. Over the centuries, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Britain, and the United States have vied for sovereignty over the islands and their rich resources, and all have left their indelible mark on the peoples and cultures they touched. Taking this heritage into account, and beginning with the first known Caribbean islanders - the Arawak and the Carib - A Brief History of the Caribbean traces the complex and ever-changing course of events in the region, with in-depth coverage of the social, economic, and political factors that have shaped its history."--Jacket.
One of the things attracting tourists has taught us is to value the habit of preservation. We have to depend on devoted scholars and archeology diggers and always, tenacious individuals like Dr. Walter Roth. He was a medical man of German stock who moved to Guyana by way of Australia and was the moving spirit in the rise of Georgetown's museum of natural history. As a youth I made many trips to this museum and was fascinated by its presentation and displays; for instance the diorama of gold-digging operations in the far interior, the lighted fish tanks with fish such as the blood-thirsty pirai, a lifelike representation on the wall of the world's biggest freshwater fish, the arapaima, caught in Guyana. A huge live anaconda pans have all but vanished.
