Books

Books : reviews

Charles C. Mann.
1491: new revelations of the Americas before Columbus: 2nd edn.
Vintage. 2011

Charles C. Mann’s groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, Columbus did not land in a sparsely settled, near-pristine wilderness. Recent research has shown that Indians arrived millennia earlier than previously thought and shaped the lands around them in ways we are only now beginning to understand. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Native cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Perhaps most surprising, many researchers believe that past Indian cultures created much of today’s Amazon forst. This is a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

Charles C. Mann.
1493: how Europe's discovery of the Americas revolutionized trade, ecology and life on earth.
Granta. 2011

A sweeping, hugely readable account of history’s biggest ecological shake-up and the beginning of what we call globalization, when Europe and the Americas collided for the first time in millennia.

Charles C. Mann.
The Wizard and the Prophet: science and the future of our planet.
Picador. 2018

In forty years, the population of the Earth will reach ten billion. Can our world support so many people? What kind of world will it be? In this important book, Charles C. Mann illuminates the four great challenges we face – food, water, energy, climate change – through an exploration of the crucial work and wide-ranging influence of two twentieth-century scientists: Norman Borlaug and William Vogt.

Vogt (the Prophet) was the intellectual forefather of the environmental movement, and believed that in our using more than the planet has to give, our prosperity will bring us to ruin. Borlaug’s research in the 1950s led to the development of modern high-yield crops that have saved millions from starvation. The Wizard of Mann’s title, he believed that science will continue to rise to the challenges we face.

Mann tells the stories of these scientists and their crucial influence on today’s debates as his story ranges from Mexico to India, across continents and oceans, and from the past and the present to the future.