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Gavin Menzies' "1421: The Year China Discovered America" presents a fascinating premise: in the year 1421 a huge armada set forth from China to explore the oceans of the world, visiting not only India and East Africa, already known to the Chinese from previous expeditions, but also West Africa, the American continents, Australia, and even Antarctica decades or centuries before European explorers reached those same shores. But when the survivors of this great endeavor returned to China a profound change at the highest levels of the government had taken place, a change that ruptured contact with the outside world. China withdrew within itself, destroyed the records of the expedition, and the great adventure was forgotten. Nonetheless, critical information about their discoveries was conveyed to the West, sparking the European age of exploration. It is tempting to dismiss Menzies as being simply yet another in a long line of authors who have proposed extremely ambitious revisions to traditional history based upon much speculation and little solid evidence. We have all seen books that offer the true stories behind the Pyramids and Great Sphinx of Egypt, the Holy Grail, King Arthur, Atlantis, and a host of similar topics - books that promise much but soon fade from sight. Yet, Menzies does outline a large body of evidence in support of his theory. Perhaps most crucial are old maps dating from the 15th and early 16th Centuries which appear to show in persuasive detail coastlines of the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica long before European ships reached those shores. Menzies believes that these maps originated in the Chinese explorations, the information passed on to foreign contacts even while it was being obliterated at home. (Other amateur revisionist historians have sought to explain such maps by resorting to ancient sea-kings in a pre-Ice Age world or even to extraterrestrial visitors; Menizies' theory seems almost sedate in comparison.) In support of this idea, he quotes from contemporary accounts that European explorers finding "new" lands admitted that they were guided by existing maps. Menzies' partiality towards maps and questions of navigation is undoubtedly grounded in his background as a former commander of a Royal Navy nuclear submarine. The experience gave him, as he describes it, a "periscope's eye" view of lands seen from the sea, valuable in interpreting what might be shown on a centuries-old chart. There is a broad array of other evidence mentioned by Menzies: inscribed stones at numerous locations around the world, the supposed presence of Asiatic chickens and African coffee in the Americas before Columbus, the reported growth of American maize in southeast Asia before Europeans provided a link across the Pacific, Chinese-style structures in various places, mysterious old shipwrecks which seem to be Chinese junks (including one in a sandbar along California's Sacramento River), possible Chinese colonies in New England and Portugese colonies in Puerto Rico well before Columbus ... The list of presumed evidence appears endless. However - there is always a "however" in these things - can we be confident that Menzies has properly evaluated and presented this seemingly overwhelming body of information? Footnotes are rather sparse, something which must make the careful reader cautious. By Menzies' own acknowledgement, the validity of some pieces of his evidence has already been strongly challenged in the past: the stone tower of Newport in Narragansett Bay, the controversial Vinland Map, and the mysterious underwater "roads" of Bimini. Menzies has stated that additional detailed supporting material will appear on his Internet website, but as yet I have seen little there of this promised data. Given the bold nature of Menzies' proposal and the broad scope of information presented, it seems inevitable that at least some of Menzies' evidence will be shown to be in error. But might enough of it eventually be proven correct to validate his ideas? There are a number of paths of research suggested by Menzies for further pursuit, including archaeological excavation of the Sacramento River wreck and of mounds on the beaches of Bimini, DNA analysis of plants, animals, and peoples in many places ordinarily presumed isolated from one another, caron-14 dating of artifacts sitting on museum shelves, and so forth. Perhaps, the thesis of the great expedition of 1421 will be found to be too narrowly phrased, while the broader matter of pre-Columbian contact with the Americas will be buttressed. Quite possibly some of the more ambitious Chinese exploits described by Menzies, such as a voyage around the north of Greenland and the exploration of the north coast of Siberia, will be pruned away, leaving a more solid central core intact. Or maybe in the end the whole thesis will be discarded. But before that happens, I would hope that a serious look be given to Menzies' ideas and the underlying evidence. The Chinese of the 15th Century, we now understand, certainly did have vessels capable of long ocean voyages, and we should not be so Eurocentric to preclude the notion that East Asian explorers could have made their own wide-ranging explorations. And that detailed information on those old maps had to come from somewhere, after all. Was it more than only imagination and luck? "1421: The Year China Discovered America" makes for a fascinating reading experience with much in it worthy of further thought, but I would also recommend to the prospective reader that caution be exercised against taking everything at face value. At the same time, the reader would be well-advised to keep an open mind to the possibility that the ancient Chinese at least briefly knew far more of the external world than we had ever realized and that this information helped kindle the flames of European exploration.