NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A deeply engaging history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world—from the highly acclaimed author of 1491. • "Fascinating...Lively...A convincing explanation of why our world is the way it is." —The New York Times Book ReviewPresenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exc...

**From the bestselling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493—an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492—from “a remarkably engaging writer” (The New York Times Book Review).Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the lan...

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 people. But recently unexpected discoveries have dramatically changed our understanding of Indian life. Many scholars now argue that the Indians were much more numerous, were in the Americas for far longer and had far more ecological impact on the land than previously believed. Th...

Two hundred million years ago the earth consisted of a single vast continent, Pangea, surrounded by a great planetary sea. Continental drift tore apart Pangaea, and for millennia the hemispheres were separate, evolving almost entirely different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's arrival in the Americas brought together these long-separate worlds. Many historians believe that this collision of ecosystems and cultures - the Columbian Exchange - was the most consequential event in human...

1493 for Young People by Charles C. Mann tells the gripping story of globalization through travel, trade, colonization, and migration from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to the present. How did the lowly potato plant feed the poor across Europe and then cause the deaths of millions? How did the rubber plant enable industrialization? What is the connection between malaria, slavery, and the outcome of the American Revolution? How did the fabled silver mountain of sixteenth-...

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 mi...

Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet pitches two influential yet little-known scientists against each other in a race against time. As Earth braces for a population surge to ten billion in the next forty years, mankind faces daunting challenges of food, water, energy, and climate change.William Vogt, the ‘prophet’ and intellectual forefather of the environmental movement, warns us of impending doom if we use more than the planet has to give. Meanwh...

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus’s landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Cha...

New surgical techniques for the treatment of anal incontinence have given the increasing number of afflicted patients hope for a cure. Colorectal surgeons and more and more general surgeons are performing operations, yet until now they have not had a text that they can use as a reference work. The guidance and instruction that surgeons need are now available in this atlas. It describes every operation in technical detail, and the two-color illustrations clearly show the essential points of...

It is only in the last 25 years that the treatment of anal incontinence has become an important surgical discipline. This is not only because our understanding of the disorder has been greatly augmented by new investigative methods. It is also because the hydrocarbon industry has provided us with suitable materials with which to carry out the complex repairs that are now possible. Like most new areas of therapy, initial enthusiasm has been modified by experience. Some techniques have been ...

This book focuses on the pioneering applications of an expert system in development relate to agriculture in many of the developing countries, introducing the reader to some of the key concepts underlying most expert systems.