1493

He was a cruel, deluded man, today s critics say, who stumbled upon the Caribbean by luck. An agent of imperialism, he was in every way a calamity for the Americas first inhabitants. Yet a different but equally contemporary perspective suggests that we should continue to take notice of the admiral. Of all the members of humankind who have ever walked the earth, he alone inaugurated a new era in the history of life.

The king and queen of Spain, Fernando (Ferdinand) II and Isabel I, backed Colón s first voyage grudgingly. Transoceanic travel in those days was heart-toppingly expensive and risky the equivalent, perhaps, of spaceshuttle flights today. Despite relentless pestering, Colón was able to talk the monarchs into supporting his scheme only by threatening to take the project to France. He was riding to the frontier, a friend wrote later, when the queen sent a court bailiff posthaste to fetch him back. The story is probably exaggerated. Still, it is clear that the sovereigns reservations drove the admiral to whittle down his expedition, if not his ambitions, to a minimum: three small ships (the biggest may have been less than sixty feet long), a combined crew of about ninety. Colón himself had to contribute a quarter of the budget, according to a collaborator, probably by borrowing it from Italian merchants.

Everything changed with his triumphant return in March of 1493, bearing golden ornaments, brilliantly colored parrots, and as many as ten captive Indians. The king and queen, now enthusiastic, dispatched Colón just six months later on a second, vastly larger expedition: seventeen ships, a combined crew of perhaps fifteen hundred, among them a dozen or more priests charged with bringing the faith to these new lands. Because the admiral believed he had found a route to Asia, he was sure tha

[to Mann s 1491] ... Like its predecessor, 1493 runs to more than 400 pages, but it moves at a gallop ... As a historian Mann should be admired not just for his broad scope and restless intelligence but for his biological sensitivity. At every point of his tale he keeps foremost in his mind the effect of humans activities on the broader environment they inhabit.
The Wall Street Journal

Evenhandedness, a sense of wonder, the gift of turning a phrase ... Mann loves the world and adopts it as his own.
Science

Charles C. Mann glories in reality, immersing his reader in complexity.... 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. Crosby, author of The Columbian Exchange

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. Mann shows how the ecological collision of Europe and the Americas transformed virtually every aspect of human history. Beautifully written, and packed with startling research, 1493 is a monumental achievement."
David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z

[1493] is readable and well-written, based on his usual broad research, travels and interviews. A fascinating and important topic, admirably told.
John Hemming, author of Tree of Rivers
 
Fascinating ... Convincing ... 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, starred review
 
A fascinating survey ... A lucid historical panorama that s studded with entertaining studies of Chinese pirate fleets, courtly tobacco rituals, and the bloody feud between Jamestown colonists and the Indians who fed and fought them, to name a few. Brilliantly assembling colorful details into big-picture insights, Mann s fresh challenge to Eurocentric histories puts interdependence at the origin of modernity.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
Charles Mann expertly shows how the complex, interconnected ecological and economic consequences of the European discovery of the Americas shaped many unexpected aspects of the modern world. This is an example of the best kind of history book: one that changes the way you look at the world, even as it informs and entertains.
Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses

A landmark book.... Entrancingly provocative, 1493 bristles with illuminations, insights and surprises.
Shelf Awareness

Fascinating ... Engaging and well-written ... Information and insight abound on every page. This dazzling display of erudition, theory and insight will help readers to view history in a fresh way.
BookPage

Spirited ... One thing is indisputable: Mann is definitely global in his outlook and tribal in his thinking ... Mann s taxonomy of the ecological, political, religious, economic, anthropological and mystical melds together in an intriguing whole cloth.
The Star-Ledger

Mann has managed the difficult trick of telling a complicated story in engaging and clear prose while refusing to reduce its ambiguities to slogans. He is not a professional historian, but most professionals could learn a lot from the deft way he does this.... 1493 is thoroughly researched and up-to-date, combining scholarship from fields as varied as world history, immunology, and economics, but Mann wears his learning lightly. He serves up one arresting detail after another, always in vivid language. Most impressive of all, he manages to turn plants, germs, insects and excrement into the lead actors in his drama while still parading before us an unforgettable cast of human characters. He makes even the most unpromising-sounding subjects fascinating. I, for one, will never look at a piece of rubber in quite the same way now.... The Columbian Exchange has shaped everything about the modern world. It brought us the plants we tend in our gardens and the pests that eat them. And as it accelerates in the 21st century, it may take both away again. If you want to understand why, read 1493.
The New York Times Book Review

Mann is trying to do much more than punch holes in conventional wisdom; he s trying to piece together an elaborate, alternative history that describes profound changes in the world since the original voyage of Columbus. What's most surprising is that he manages to do this in such an engaging way. He writes with an incredibly dry wit.
Austin American-Statesman
 
Mann s book is jammed with facts and factoids, trivia and moments of great insight that take on power as they accumulate.
The Washington Post

Although many have written about the impact of Europeans on the New World, few have told the worldwide story in a manner accessible to lay readers as effectively as Mann does here.
Library Journal

The chief strength of Mann s richly associative books lies in their ability to reveal new patterns among seemingly disparate pieces of accepted knowledge. They re stuffed with forehead-slapping aha moments.... If Mann were to work his way methodically through the odd-numbered years of history, he could be expected to publish a book about the global impact of the Great Recession sometime in the middle of the next millennium. If it s as good as 1493, it would be worth the wait.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
 
None of us could travel with Columbus in 1492. But that s OK, because in 1493 we can take an even more exhilarating ride. This powerful rethinking of the origins and consequences of globalization is so illuminating, it s scary.
Carl Safina, author of A Sea In Flames and The View From Lazy Point
 
Almost mind-boggling in its scope, enthusiasm and erudition.... Almost every page of 1493 contains some extraordinarily provocative argument or arrestingly bizarre detail.... Ranging freely across time and space, Mann s book is full of compelling stories.... A tremendously provocative, learned and surprising read.
The Times of London