Charles C. Mann

Bronson Pinchot

The Wizard and the Prophet

Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet 'Does the earth’s finite carrying capacity mean economic growth has to stop? That momentous question is the subject of Charles Mann’s brilliant book.' Wall Street Journal 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 unique, original and 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 little-known 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. Brilliantly original in concept, wryly observant and deeply researched, The Wizard and the Prophet is essential reading for readers of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens or Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, for anyone interested in how we got here and in the future of our species.

Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet

Neal Stephenson

Mark Teppo

Ellis Amdur

Robert Sammelin

Originally published as CIMARRONIN: A SAMURAI IN NEW SPAIN #1-3 and CIMARRONIN: FALL OF THE CROSS #1-3.

Cimarronin

Peter Menzel

Photographs show the homes and possessions of average families in thirty countries around the world and document each family's lifestyle

A Global Family Portrait

Material World

Reveals how the voyages of Columbus reintroduced plants and animals that had been separated millions of years earlier, documenting how the ensuing exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas fostered a European rise, decimated imperial China and rendered Manila and Mexico City the center of the world for two centuries. Reprint.

Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

1493

Based on the startling revelations that the author presented in his adult-level 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, this book for young readers is a fascinating full-color journey into the world of the many advanced cultures that populated the Americas before the arrival of European explorers.

The Americas of 1491

Before Columbus

Robert P. Crease

The Second Creation is a dramatic--and human--chronicle of scientific investigators at the last frontier of knowledge. Robert Crease and Charles Mann take the reader on a fascinating journey in search of "unification" with brilliant scientists such as Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and many others. They provide the definitive and highly entertaining story of the development of modern physics, and the human story of the physicists who set out to find the "theory of everything."

Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-century Physics

The Second Creation

Mann shows how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques have come to previously unheard-of conclusions about the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans: In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe. Certain cities--such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital--were greater in population than any European city. Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets. The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids. Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings. Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process that the journal Science recently described as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering."--Publisher description.

New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1491

1491 - Kolomb'dan Önce Amerika

Mark L. Plummer

No drug in the world outsells aspirin. With billions of dollars at stake, and no medically significant differences among the hundreds of brands around the globe, rival drug makers have been driven to the extremes of corporate warfare. Authors Mann and Plummer look inside this world of relentless competition to show the ploys, the battles, the bursts of extraordinary marketing, advertising and litigation that have resulted - and relate the unique and little-known medical history of the drug itself. The Aspirin Wars penetrates the wilder shores of capitalism to reveal the essence of business competition at its canniest.

Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition

The Aspirin Wars

David H. Freedman

Hailed as "a chilling portrait" by The Boston Globe and "a crafty thriller" by Newsweek, this astonishing story of an obsessive hacker promises to change the way you look at the Internet forever. At Large chronicles the massive manhunt that united hard-nosed FBI agents, computer nerds, and uptight security bureaucrats against an elusive computer outlaw who broke into highly secured computer systems at banks, universities, federal agencies, and top-secret military weapons-research sites. Here is "a real-life tale of cops vs. hackers, by two technology writers with a flair for turning a complicated crime and investigation into a fast-moving edge-of-your-seat story" (Kirkus Reviews, starred). At Large blows the lid off the frightening vulnerability of the global online network, which leaves not only systems, but also individuals, exposed.

The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion

At Large

Charles C. Mann schreibt die Geschichte des vorkolumbischen Amerikas. Er macht deutlich, dass die indianischen Kulturen oftmals weiter entwickelt waren als die europäische. Ihre Boote waren schneller und wendiger als die der Europäer, ihre Städte größer als das damalige Paris. Kolumbus‘ Ankunft in Amerika veränderte den Kontinent fundamental. Zwei Zivilisationen trafen aufeinander, deren Historie und Kultur unterschiedlicher nicht hätten sein können, und für die Ureinwohner war die Begegnung folgenschwer: Die Masern-, Pocken- und die Grippeviren, welche die Europäer einschleppten, rafften einen Großteil von ihnen dahin, Kriege entmachteten sie. Mann lässt das vorkolumbische Amerika aufleben. Er gewährt uns überraschende Einblicke in die Lebensweise der Ureinwohner und zeigt, wie noch heute ihre Mais-, Kürbis- und Kartoffelanbauflächen weite Teile des Kontinents prägen. «Amerika vor Kolumbus» ist ein wichtiges, mitreißend erzähltes Buch. «Die Indianer waren keine nomadischen, ökologisch vorbildlichen Menschen, die zu Pferde Büffel jagten. Sie erbauten und bevölkerten einige der größten und reichsten Städte der Welt. Keineswegs abhängig von der Großwildjagd, lebten die meisten Indianer auf Farmen. Amerika war unermesslich geschäftiger, mannigfaltiger und dichter bevölkert, als es sich die Forscher früher vorgestellt hatten. Und älter war es auch.» Das Buch wurde von der National Academy of Sciences als bestes Buch des Jahres ausgezeichnet.

Die Geschichte eines unentdeckten Kontinents

Amerika vor Kolumbus

1493 - Amerikanin Kesfinden Küresellesmeye Kisa Dünya Tarihi

Charles M. Mann

1493 : una nueva historia del mundo después de Colón

Examines the controversy over the Endangered Species Act and calls for a new set of principles to serve as a guideline for choosing which endangered species to save

The Future of Endangered Species

Noah's Choice

Up until very recently it was believed that in 1491, the year before Columbus landed, the Americas, one-third of the earth's surface, were a near-pristine wilderness inhabited by small, roaming bands of indigenous peoples. Then, the story went, they encountered European society, their world was turned upside down and they entered history. But recently unexpected discoveries have dramatically changed our understanding of Indian Life. Many scholars now argue that the Indians were much more numerous than previously believed, that they were in the Americas for far longer, and that they had far more ecological impact on the land. This knowledge has enormous implications for today's environmental disputes, yet little has filtered into textbooks, and even less into public awareness. Charles Mann brings together all of the latest research, and the results of his own travels throughout North and South America, to provide a new, fascinating and iconoclastic account of the Americas before Columbus.

Rewriting the History of the New World

Ancient Americans

Traces the story of aspirin, a wonder drug that has survived virtually unchanged over the course of a century of competition, hucksterism, and corporate skulduggery

Bob Kanigher

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