Rating: 
Summary: Is Gavin Menzies to be taken seriously?
Review: In an age when writers are seeking to make the top dollars, historical accuracy can be compromised for the sake of a good story. "Pop History", as some call it, surely make for a good read if the reader is willing to suspend disbelief; yet these stories often offer up a few slices short of the whole pizza pie.
The is irrefutible proof that the Imperial Treasure fleet was real, that it travelled around the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and that it was disassembled around the year 1421. These facts, in combination with what Mr. Menzies believes to be proof of a Chinese pressence in the Americans, lead him to put forth several interesting theories. Revisionist Historians, ex: Howard Zinn, have been searching for ways to discredit Columbus's discoveries, and Menzies's book seems to follow along with the current trends of thinking. Eastern, rather than western, settlement of the "new world" would render everything Each AMerican learned in High School about American History,and face it folks isnt that the farthest that most of our fellow countrymen choose to pursue this path, wrong.
if it were true.
Although Mr. Menzies can tell a good story, he was unable to convince me of the soundness of his argument, however hard he did try.
Rating: 
Summary: I HOPE it's true!
Review: If you read this lively and entertaining book, you'll hope Gavin Menzies is right and will offer further evidence of his notions. This book is certainly a bit fanciful, but just too fun to ignore.The idea that Europeans were nothing more than "also rans" shakes the bedrock of our historical foundation, but the snippets of miscellaneous 'discoveries' (such as the strange descriptions of kangaroos, the flora and fauna transplants, and the suspicious wreckages located off far-flung coasts) tempt me towards investigating the 'new' frontiers of speculation. I don't doubt Menzies' sailing expertise, but he needs a battery of other experts to back up some of his tangential theories. I certainly hope he finds them. I look forward to reading the further research that is sure to follow. It would certainly be fun to imagine that the Chinese managed to get an ancient ship lodged in San Francisco, located the North Pole, mined in Australia, and swapped goods with the early Central Americans. With style and enthusiasm, Gavin Menzies opened up a big 'can-o-worms' that will provide several decades of exciting study and further speculation. This book is a great place to begin that intellectual journey that awaits. (paperback version)
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but with flaws
Review: Different - it certainly addresses the euro-centric view of world exploration, but there are some parts I found suspect or disappointing. The introductory map professes to be of East Asia in 1421, but it describes Persia as being within the modern boundaries of Iran, and gives modern boundaries to China, Mongolia & the Russian Far East? This fails to represent whatever were the true spheres of influence. Repeatedly Menzies confuses cause & effect. Many of the resultant journeys appear to be based upon the Chinese having prior knowledge of Ocean currents, eg in the Pacific the South Equatorial Current divides, going North to the Philippines and South to Australia. So apparently the fleet deliberately divides itself in 2 - but surely if they did divide, it was accidental, as the hitherto unknown Current flow caught them unawares? They were swept up the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay at the mercy of the prevailing winds, but then there is no explanation of how did they ever get back again to the open sea? He waxes lyrical about the problems of measuring Longitude, but when he draws his own maps, such as those of the Chinese Island bases across the South Pacific, the maps aren't accurate, eg placing Easter Island some 3,000 miles west of its true position. For a book with such a strong emphasis on geography, spoilt by some sloppy cartography.
Rating: 
Summary: Give This Book a Prize for Fantasy
Review: If you believe that little green men from outer space built Stonehenge or the Nazca lines in Peru, this is the book you want to read. Don't get me wrong. I like books that shake and rattle the academic establishment -- but you gotta be at least moderately credible and get most of your facts right. Menzies fails on both counts, although he's pretty good at covering up his astounding claims with a patina of scientific language.
Menzies thesis is that the Chinese sailed around the world in 1421 and on side jaunts discovered Antarctica, the North Pole, circumnavigated Greenland (!!), and left colonies all over the Americas including building stone towers near Boston. Moreover, the Chinese sailed around the world in only a couple of years. Oddly, the Chinese seem to have missed Europe where their visit would surely have been remembered and recorded.
As in all good cons, there's a grain of truth in Menzies. The Chinese undertook some serious sea expeditions in the 1400s, exploring the East African coast as far south as Mozambique and probably touching on the northern coast of Australia. It's conceivable that at some point in their long history the Chinese -- purposely or by accident -- may have reached the northwest Coast of North America -- as it is equally plausible that American Indians may have reached out toward Asia. Read "Kon Tiki."
Despite a kernel of fact, most of Menzies' book is a mountain of nonsense. To take just one claim, Menzies has the Chinese circumnavigating ice-bound Greenland, explaining that this was possible because of a warmer climate in those days. Au contraire, Gavin. As every geographer knows, the period from about 1400 to 1700 is known as the "Little Ice Age" and temperatures were significantly colder than they are today. Greenland was not circumnavigatable by sea in 1421; rather the Norse colonies in Greenland were dying out because of the miserable weather. The first non-motorized circumnavigation of Greenland took place in 2001, and it was accomplished by dogsled and kayak, not a 15th century Chinese junk.
Many, many other examples of silliness are found in the book. Suffice it to say that this book should be marketed in the fantasy section of your local book store.
Smallchief
Rating:
Summary: A Provocative Study
Review: This is one of the best books I have read in the past few years. I say that because it dares (much like Jared Diamond's _Guns, Germs, and Steel_) to ask big history questions and challenge assumptions that many academic historians fear to address. That's been one of the reasons behind the backlash of criticism of this book from academic circles. Certainly there are questionable, even doubtful, assertions made at times in this book. But simply to ask "what if the Chinese discovered Africa, Europe and the Americas in the 1400s?" and then to be able to back it with many examples from such diverse areas of study as shipwrecks, stone monuments, DNA, and samples of chicken and vegetable species, not to mention oral traditions, is an admirable task.
Menzies is able to lure the open minded and even skeptical reader into his argument by carefully explaining his train of thought as he studied old maps and sea charts, while arranging the book in geographic order. Once we accept his evidence for the Chinese rounding the Cape of Good Hope, he lures us into his research on Atlantic islands and then the Americas. He does so in a comfortable writing style that easily makes this a page-turner.
It is fascinating to read how someone who begins research on such a wide-ranging topic begins to encounter unforseen links between seemingly trivial bits of archaeological, genetic, and oral information. There are fascinating details like the Chinese bringing coconuts to Ecuador and roses to California, as well as the revelation of Chinese wrecks in San Francisco harbor. Finally, his updates in the paperback edition and his use of a web site for keeping readers appraised of new information demonstrates his infectious enthusiasm for this ambitious undertaking. I recommend that people check out _When China Ruled the Seas_ (particularly helpful for its wider chronological scope and illustrations of the boats). Find out more about the Chinese attack on Greenland (!) and secret maps of Europeans when you read this fun book.
Rating:
Summary: About DNA problems with modern native americans + chinese
Review: The studies of native american indians from all over North and South America, done by such scientists as Spencer Wells, does NOT show these peoples to have DNA in common with the modern Chinese that would thus be showing a common ancestor of the two peoples that lived just around 580 to 600 years ago (or 29 to 30 generations ago). The DNA sequeances the two groups share show common ancestors more like 12,000 years ago (or 600 generations ago). Therefore, theories in this book of any 15th century Chinese settling in the americas and becoming the direct ancestors of some modern day native North Americans or native South Americans is obviously all wrong.
Rating:
Summary: This claim was debunked even before 1895.
Review: Before you buy 1421, beg, borrow or buy a copy of "Collingridge, George: The Discovery of Australia, 1895 (Outsized)". Reprinted a century later.
In this superb book Collingridge compares literally hundreds of claims to early world discovery, dating from 100 AD to 1770 AD, including the 1421 one. Some have merit, the 1421 claim is one that has least merit.
The maps are better than Menzies'. The scolarship is better. The readability is better.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible book. Incredible work from Gavin Menzies
Review: This book is pretty long and so full of all kinds of facts and very well thought out ideas. It took me a couple of weeks to finish it.
But this is a book that everyone should read. It is so clear, so convincing. There is really no arguing with it.
Someone should make a new movie about 1492, and a whole series about 1421-1423. It makes more sense now that Columbus thought that he had reached China, or Chinese territory. There were Chinese artifacts there, and he had heard reports of Chinese ships coming across the Atlantic from the area of the Grand Banks.
Can't go into it all here. Just an amazing book of amazing work. Goes to show that dedicated amateur historians can outclass professional historians if they have the discipline and energy.
Just amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Too much time underwater
Review: I began with an open mind, but after about the middle of the book - when I could find a new whopper being sold on almost every page - I read it only for laughs. The huge number of historical mistakes have been listed elsewhere and can easily be found in a websearch. However, as a traveler and ocean sailor I would like to point out some of the maritime errors, since Menzies makes the claim to have a special advantage in this area over university-trained historians. For example, he writes that the Chinese fleet sailed southeast from the Orinoco around the easternmost point of Brasil, near Recife. I recently was windsurfing this coast and can state that the winds howl from ESE at 15-30 knots year-round, making such a feat impossible for the bulky chinese square riggers which could not effectively go to weather. Menzies also writes that the fleet passed through the Tuamotus in what is now French Polynesia. Until the advent of GPS, this huge string of low coral atolls was known as the Dangerous Archipelago. The reefs are impossible to see at night, currents are wild and unpredictable, seas can be very heavy, the winds and geography offer many a lee shore, and without charts very few vessels have survived a passage there. Even cruising sailors with a good ability to go upwind usually avoided it. I sailed there a few years ago with GPS, accurate charts, and radar to pick up the palm trees at night - and it was still hairy.
Menzies makes much of maps being distorted because the sailors were caught in ocean currents. Yet any sailor within sight of land can discern if he is in a current, and in fact a good sailor will also know such a thing far from land because of the behavior of his boat. If the fleet had been sailing due north off the coast of Africa, for example, they would have run aground on the westerly bulge of the continent long before the current carried them clear.
One could list many more such obvious errors, but it would only waste your time, just as Menzies wasted mine. The point here is not that his thesis is impossible, or that his mistakes deny everything in Menzies' book. The point is rather that the author is unable to distinguish between what is true, what is possible, what is unlikely, and what is impossible. And because of this lack of distinction, the book is garbage.
Rating:
Summary: Spencer Wells's DNA studies dsprove Chinese settlement...
Review: in the new world. In his book The Journey of Man Wells talks about DNA strains of Y-Chromosomes in Native Americans all throughout the Americas. None of them have Chinese Y Chromosomes. Menzies's application about Chinese settlers in the Americas over 500 years ago is wrong. And get a load of the obviously frigged up way he tries to make early 15th century Europe out to be twice as primitive as it really was.
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