1493: How the Ecological Collision of Europe and the Americas Gave Rise to the Modern World - Hardcover

`Almost mind-boggling in its scope, enthusiasm and erudition ... a tremendously provocative, learned and surprising read' --Sunday Times

`A wonderfully entertaining and subtly balanced book' --New Scientist

'Drawing on new research, Mann reframes the past 500 years to riveting effect' --Nature

`Charles Mann gives us the version of the Columbian outcome that our era calls for'
--Literary Review

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 history since the Neolithic Revolution. And it was the most consequential event in biological history since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Beginning with the world of microbes and moving up the species ladder to mankind, Mann rivetingly describes the profound effect this exchanging of species had on the culture of both continents.