I was glad I found this book because it has much information about the Precolumbian American Southeast, an area whose history is often ignored. It provided a good description of both the archaeology and iconography of the ancient cultures. If you plan to visit any sites in the Southeast, I would recommend this book. However, the first chapter was not worthy of the rest of the book. It showed an appalling lack of knowledge of other civilizations. It was both overromanticized and made unjustified comparisons. Luckily, I decided to continue reading.