The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann

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.

Mann has published four prior books, including Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species and The Second Creation, and is a correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly. He has received prizes from the American Bar Association, the Margaret Sanger Foundation, the American Institute of Physics, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others. Sloan Foundation, for example. His work was chosen for inclusion in The Best American Science Writing 2003 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003 anthologies. He resides in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife and children.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780345802842
ISBN 10	0345802845
Title	The Wizard and the Prophet
Author	Charles Mann
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2019-04-16
Number of pages	640
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.