Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World

"Marvelous Possessions is a book about the most extraordinary cross-cultural encounter in history." So begins Stephen Greenblatt's new Introduction to his 1991 study of how Europeans and Native Americans experienced the European "discovery," of a New World. Pointing to fantasies of meeting aliens from other planets in movies like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Greenblatt argues that they, too, describe our ability to blend astonishment with blind greed when faced with an entirely new and different civilization. Rich with primary sources (travel writing from 16th and 17th centuries), the book includes chapters on "kidnapping language" and the importance of interpreters. Greenblatt points out that while the story he tells is generally tragic, it includes "aspects of our existence that keep us from despair: curiosity, magnanimity, generosity, self-criticism, the will to experiment, and the dream of justice."