When Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492, his journey prompted the exchange of not only information but also food, animals, insects, plants and viruses between the continents. 'In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,' goes the old elementary school rhyme.īut it was Columbus' activities in the years that followed, says writer Charles C. This interview was originally broadcast on August 8, 2011. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Beautifully written, and packed with startling research, 1493 is a monumental achievement.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title 1493 Subtitle Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Author Charles C. Mann shows how the ecological collision of Europe and the Americas transformed virtually every aspect of human history. 'In the wake of his groundbreaking book 1491 Charles Mann has once again produced a brilliant and riveting work that will forever change the way we see the world. The worn clichés crumble as readers gain introductions to the freshest of the systems of analysis gendered in the first post-Columbian millennium.' - Alfred W. He launches across the Atlantic with Columbus and swings port and starboard through time and space over the whole of the world. Mann glories in reality, immersing his reader in complexity. Brilliantly assembling colorful details into big-picture insights, Mann's fresh, challenge to Eurocentric histories puts interdependence at the origin of modernity.' - Publishers Weekly

Focusing on ecology and economics, Mann provides a spellbinding account of how an unplanned collision of unfamiliar animals, vegetables, minerals and diseases produced unforeseen wealth, misery, social upheaval and the modern world.' - Kirkus Reviews In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination. Presenting the latest generation of research by scientists, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Manila and Mexico City - where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted - the center of the world. Columbus's voyages brought them back together - and marked the beginning of an extraordinary exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas.Īs Charles Mann shows, this global ecological tumult the 'Columbian Exchange' - underlies much of subsequent human history. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents.

From the author of 1491 - the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas - a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

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