Charles C. Mann author photo
Image via Wikimedia Commons, sous licence CC BY 2.0.

Charles C. Mann

Charles C. Mann is an American journalist and author focused on science, history, and environmental change. He is best known for 1491 and 1493, influential books on the Americas before and after Columbus, and for The Wizard and the Prophet, which examines competing visions of humanity’s ecological future.

Biographie et Parcours de l'Auteur

Charles C. Mann, born in 1955 and educated at Amherst College, came to prominence not from a university faculty post but from the world of long-form journalism, a background that helps explain the unusual range and readability of his work. By the time he became widely known as an author of big-idea history, he had already established himself as a science journalist and correspondent for The Atlantic, Science, and Wired, with additional work appearing in outlets such as The New York Times, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post. His emergence as a major nonfiction writer was gradual and reportorial: a habit of following specialized research into expansive narrative eventually led him from magazine features to book-length arguments, and 1491 grew in part from earlier Atlantic reporting. ((https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107179/1493-by-charles-c-mann/?utm_source=openai))

Afficher Plus

Citations

quote
Sometimes it’s the little things that count
-What Ancient Maize Can Tell Us About Thousands of Years of Civilization in America
quote
It would become one of the most influential books of the 20th century—and one of the most heatedly attacked
-The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation
quote
To journey here is to roam through almost 6,000 years of civilization, to one of the places where the human enterprise began
-What Endures From the Ancient Civilizations That Once Ruled the Central Andes?
quote
Clovis points, it seems, were an American invention—perhaps the first American invention
-The Clovis Point and the Discovery of America’s First Culture
quote
Massasoit was an adroit politician, but the dilemma he faced would have tested Machiavelli
-Native Intelligence
quote
India will make a choice, but it will not be India's alone
-Solar or coal? India's decision may decide the fate of the planet
quote
Today Guy Callendar is a historical footnote, but tomorrow he will have a chapter of his own
-Meet the Amateur Scientist Who Discovered Climate Change
quote
Going to distant planets, in other words, means fighting one of the greatest forces in human affairs: compound interest
-The Tricky Ethics of Intergalactic Colonization
quote
A lump of coal is a thoroughly ubiquitous 21st-century artifact, as much an emblem of our time as the iPhone
-Renewables Aren't Enough. Clean Coal Is the Future
quote
Climate change is gradual, impalpable, world-altering, multigenerational, a situation that will not become readily tangible until irreversible lines already have been crossed
-The worst effects of climate change may not be felt for centuries. So how should we think about it now?

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Voix de la Communauté

"Charles C. Mann is one of those rare writers who can make scholarly concepts exciting and accessible"

James Wilson ((

"Mann has mastered that scholarship and written the most elegant synthesis"

Joseph J. Ellis ((

"Mann is as comfortable in the 16th century as the 21st"

The Independent ((

"Charles Mann has once again produced a brilliant and riveting work"

David Grann ((

"Mann tells a powerful, provocative and important story"

The Washington Post Book World ((

"Charles C. Mann glories in reality, immersing his reader in complexity"

Alfred W. Crosby ((

"Charles C. Mann is a science journalist, author and historian"

The Guardian ((

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"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

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"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC
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17

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

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"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

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