About this book
1493 picks up where Charles C. Mann's earlier book left off, looking at what happened after Europeans reached the Americas. Its subject is the Columbian Exchange: the movement of plants, animals, microbes and people between hemispheres that had been separated for millennia.
Mann ranges across the globe to show its effects. He looks at American silver flowing to China, potatoes and maize transforming diets in Europe and Asia, malaria and yellow fever reshaping the Americas, and the forced migration of enslaved Africans, which he treats with seriousness and care. The result is a portrait of the first truly global economy and ecology, and of how much of the modern world began in these exchanges.
Like all of Mann's work, it is driven by curiosity and full of surprising connections, written for general readers rather than specialists. Read it alongside 1491 for a two-part view of the Americas before and after contact, or with Guns, Germs, and Steel for another big-picture take.
Who it’s for
Great for readers who love big-picture, connective history; accessible but packed with ideas.
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