As the title of The American Indian and the Problem of History suggest, this work has a historiographic emphasis. In the wake of revisionist trends of the 1970s, Indian historians face a number of knotty problems as they endeavor to avoid ethnocentric biases and to incorporate Native American sources and perspectives. Collectively, the papers in this volume assess the achievements and pitfalls of revisionist history and consider methods and goals for future scholarship. For Martin and many of the contributors, a principal concern is the need to integrate an understanding of the interplay between religion and the environment in writing Indian history. ‘What was their metaphysics? Everything we write about [native Americans],” says Martin, “should follow from this seminal question” (p.216). Having circulated copies of his article, ‘the metaphysics of Writing Indian history” (reprinted here as Chapter 1), martin asked for the “large contours” of Indian and white history and “what it all means” (p.5). he evoked a variety of searching responses from his eighteen distinguished contributors, including veteran historians Robert Berthofer, Jr., Wilcolm Washburn, Cornelius Jaenen, Mary Young, henry Dobyns, vine Deloria, Jr. , and a number of equally impressive, younger scholars. The essys range in style and content from Berkhofer’s excellent essay, ‘Cultural Pluralism Versus Ethnocentrism in the New Indian History,” to Neil Salisbury’s useful overview of Indian prehistory, to Gerald Vizenor’s mythic satire, “Socioacupunture: Mythic Reversals and Striptease in four Scenes,” making provocative reading.