Caribbean

by James Michener, 1989 

• Mysteriously, these ball courts of the ancient Arawaks and their cousins the Maya to he west were similar in size to the fields that Europeans and Americans continue later would choose for their soccer, football rugby, and lacrosse fields, some eighty yards long by thirty wide, as if some inner measuring system for the human body had cried through all the centuries: 'A man can run when others are hammering at him, about this far and no farther,' and the fields in all these heavy sports confirmed to these dimensions. p15
• On priests, astronomy, prediction, and power: "Next month the sun will disappear, and unless you help us build that new room in the temple, the sun will not reappear, and we shall all die. The threat is useful, because when the sun actually disappears as we predicted, they listen, even the rulers. 
• Because of the Isthmus of Panama, the Pacific was called the South Sea, and the Caribbean the North
• He mentions an economists pamphlet title, with the following being the title, and all in italics: "A computation of the money that hath been exorbitantly raised upon the people of Great Britain by the sugar planters in one year, from January 1759 to January 1960; showing how much money a family of each rank, degree or class hath lost by that rapacious monopoly having continued so long, after I laid it open, in my State of British Sugar-Colony, which was published last winter" p340
• On the Control of Information Back in the Day Before the Internet or Even Radio: "Who allowed copies of that Underhill letter to reach these shores?" ... it's instructive to hear how serious it was to spread information, via "high tech" means of printed pamphlets, on an island (or anywhere else for that matter, but especially because an island can be so easily controlled) p489