The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus by Irving Rouse, Yale University Press, New Haven. 1992

There are few people who can claim to command as much knowledge ofthe prehistory of the Caribbean as lrving Rouse. Professor Rouse began his field work inthe Caribbean in the mid- 1930's; this book is his synthesis of the vast amount ofinformation he has accumulated on the region in the half century that has elapsed sincethat time. In order to accomplish the tremendous task of interpret­ing nearly 6000 yearsof the region's prehistory, Rouse focused this book on the culture history of the NativeAmerican group known as the Tainos, the name given to the people who occupied much ofthe Caribbean upon the arrival of Europeans to the area in the 15th centuryAD