“After 1492 the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.” — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
The Japanese drive on the left side of the road. Most streets literally do not have names. — Charles C. Mann Drive Copy Share Image
Americans are willing to cheer on politicians who denounce bureaucratic overreach and job-killing red tape in abstract terms. But they turn out… — Charles C. Mann Drinking water Copy Share Image
“Half of the 102 people on the Mayflower made it through the first winter, which to me seemed amazing. How did they… — Charles C. Mann History Copy Share Image
The legal fight over climate change begins in the United States with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. Under the Act,… — Charles C. Mann Air pollution Copy Share Image
Under the Paris agreement, every one of the 147 signatories issues what is called an 'intended nationally determined contribution' (INDC), which amounts… — Charles C. Mann Climate Copy Share Image
“At Marajó, Meggers and Evans soon noticed an oddity: the earliest traces of Marajóara culture were the most elaborate. As the centuries… — Charles C. Mann Ceramics Copy Share Image
Seoul and Shanghai, Jaipur and Jakarta; shining skyscrapers, pricey hotels, traffic-jammed streets ablaze with neon - all were built atop a foundation… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
Some Western states have collaborative water agreements with Indian tribes - Washington state, for instance, monitors a number of its rivers to… — Charles C. Mann Indian Copy Share Image
Canceling the climate pact will loudly demonstrate Trump's willingness to fight - an important step for the White House because, on a… — Charles C. Mann Climate Copy Share Image
Big Water makes an argument straight out of Economics 101. The best way to deliver water to people's homes efficiently, the water… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“The viruses that cause smallpox, influenza, hepatitis, measles, encephalitis, and viral pneumonia; the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, typhus, scarlet fever,… — Charles C. Mann History Copy Share Image
“I kept waiting for the book to appear. The wait grew more frustrating when my son entered school and was taught the… — Charles C. Mann Book Copy Share Image
“Colonial writers knew that disease tilled the virgin soil of the Americas countless times in the sixteenth century. But what they did… — Charles C. Mann Writing Copy Share Image
Farmers can't plant much more land because almost every accessible acre of arable soil is already in use. Nor can the use… — Charles C. Mann Agriculture Copy Share Image
“Every society, big or little, misses out on “obvious” technologies. The lacunae have enormous impact on people’s lives—imagine Europe with efficient plows… — Charles C. Mann Civilization Copy Share Image
So many wells have been dug in Changzhou that its groundwater has been over-exploited, and the local ground level has sunk by… — Charles C. Mann City Copy Share Image
“To we moderns the sensation of being in a constructed environment is so ubiquitous as to be invisible—in the cocoon of our… — Charles C. Mann Environment Copy Share Image
“the king was talking with Bartolomé de las Casas, a fiery Dominican priest who had just completed Brief Account of the Destruction… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
The way I think of it, economics and ecology occupy two intellectual silos, isolated from each other. Even when they do take… — Charles C. Mann Consideration Copy Share Image
“More than a hundred sets of casta paintings are known. Many are beautifully crafted. Some were painted by mixed people themselves. Looking” — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
As an issue, climate change was unlucky: when nonspecialists first became aware of it in the 1990s, environmental attitudes had already become… — Charles C. Mann Change Copy Share Image
“The Maya collapsed because they overshot the carrying capacity of their environment. They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
By the 1980s, businesses had realized that environmental issues had a price tag. Increasingly, they balked. Reflexively, the anticorporate Left pivoted; Earth… — Charles C. Mann Business Copy Share Image
“Drought indeed stressed the system, but the societal disintegration in the south was due not to surpassing inherent ecological limits but the… — Charles C. Mann Climate Copy Share Image
Indeed, for all Donald Trump's railing about the efforts to curb climate change, nobody in his administration seems to have paid any… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“export of food from Ireland during the famine: 430,000 tons of grain in 1846 and 1847, the two worst years. “The Almighty… — Charles C. Mann Famine Copy Share Image
Cash-strapped cities in nations from Argentina to Albania have begun to turn over their municipal water systems to Big Water, often under… — Charles C. Mann Argentina Copy Share Image
“visitors to Andean history note certain ways of doing things that recur in ways striking to the outsider, sometimes in one variant,… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
All parents remember the moment when they first held their children - the tiny crumpled face, an entire new person, emerging from… — Charles C. Mann Children Copy Share Image
The queue of activists, interest groups, and ordinary people wringing their hands over what a President Donald Trump might do in office… — Charles C. Mann Activists Copy Share Image
Scientists have established huge numbers of links between particular diseases and snippets of DNA, but in the great majority of cases, this… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“Likely the milpa cannot be replicated on an industrial scale. But by studying its essential features, researchers may be able to smooth… — Charles C. Mann Agriculture Copy Share Image
You know how in movies the new president comes in and promises to perform sweeping actions with a stroke of a pen?… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“The staple crop of the highlands was the potato, which unlike maize regularly grows at altitudes of 14,000 feet; the tubers, cultivated… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including maize,… — Charles C. Mann Crops Copy Share Image
“Because they did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker. Left… — Charles C. Mann Copy Share Image
“Having grown separately for millennia, the Americas were a boundless sea of novel ideas, dreams, stories, philosophies, religions, moralities, discoveries, and all… — Charles C. Mann Dreams Copy Share Image
“Until Columbus, Indians were a keystone species in most of the hemisphere. Annually burning undergrowth, clearing and replanting forests, building canals and… — Charles C. Mann Environment Copy Share Image
