In his book, Indian Givers, Jack Weatherford gives us a whole bunch of information about how the culture, inventions and crops of American Indians contributed to European society and their culture. In this paper, I will talk about three of his arguments, try to state them in my own words, and explain how he supports his arguments so that we can see how he made this book so reliable. By doing this, we can learn how to read a book in a critical way, and be able to look for the points which the author is trying to make, and understand them better. .
In chapter 3, Weatherford talks about the industrialization of American Indian and European society. One of his arguments in this chapter is that the introduction of New World crops started Kahl's biggest change of their lifestyle, resulting the construction of the atomic power plant. One of those crops, the American Indian potato made a big change of the people and their animal's diet, and it also caused the nightmare in their economy (p. 41). This argument makes the readers wonder why those crops changed people's lifestyle so much resulting the atomic power plant, or how could potato cause a nightmare in Kahl's economy. To support the argument, Weatherford brings up various facts. He talks about the use of the mills they used to use to mill the grains, the new way to use them, and how much other crops from New World like cotton and rubber had contributed to their society (p. 43, 48). He also cites some resources from other scholars to support his discussion. For example, he uses Wolf's information to talk about the American exports of cotton. .
He talks about the contributions of the American Indian's crops to the European society in chapter 4. The argument I am going to talk about is, the achievement of American foods in solving the problem of starvation throughout the Europe (p. 70). He emphasizes especially on potatoes. He states that each country's population grew bigger after they adopted potatoes (p.
