ROAM AGENCY

THE WIZARD AND THE PROPHET

Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World

Charles C. Mann

 

Knopf (January 2018)

Hardcover • ISBN 9780307961693 • US $28.95 • 464 pages

ABOUT THE BOOK:

From the best-selling, 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 it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups–Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug’s cry. Only in that way can everyone win!

Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces–food, water, energy, climate change–grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author’s insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.

 

OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

At Large: The Strange Case of the World’s Biggest Internet Invasion (with David H. Freedman)

Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition (with Mark Plummer)

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 (with Rebecca Stefoff)

The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics (with Robert P. Crease)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Charles C. Mann, a correspondent for The Atlantic, Science, and Wired, has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Technology Review, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post, as well as for the TV network HBO and the series Law & Order. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he is the recipient of writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. His 1491 won the National Academies Communication Award for the best book of the year.

 

RIGHTS INFORMATION:

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