1493

Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

By: Charles C. Mann

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

©2011 Charles C. Mann (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Charles Mann expertly shows how the complex, interconnected ecological and economic consequences of the European discovery of the Americas shaped many unexpected aspects of the modern world. This is an example of the best kind of history book: one that changes the way you look at the world, even as it informs and entertains.” (Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses)

“In 1491 Charles Mann brilliantly described the Americas on the eve of Columbus’s voyage. Now in 1493 he tells how the world was changed forever by the movement of foods, metals, plants, people and diseases between the ‘New World’ and both Europe and China. His book is readable and well-written, based on his usual broad research, travels and interviews. A fascinating and important topic, admirably told.” (John Hemming, author of Tree of Rivers)

“In the wake of his groundbreaking book 1491 Charles Mann has once again produced a brilliant and riveting work that will forever change the way we see the world. Mann shows how the ecological collision of Europe and the Americas transformed virtually every aspect of human history. Beautifully written, and packed with startling research, 1493 is a monumental achievement." (David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z)

So much history!!!

Any additional comments?

I have to give this 4 stars because it's just so darn impressive. The author clearly did his research, and he made the interwoven stories fascinating. Sometimes, however, the history became too complex to hold my attention. I would imagine that historians would find this more compelling.

I came away from the listen with a newly-found appreciation for how the Colombian Exchange began to interconnect the world, and I'm amazed at the impact that exchange of commerce had on so many millions of people. Who knew that the chief reason I live in the U.S. is because my ancestors fled famine-struck Ireland because Columbus discovered America and the potato was discovered in Peru! Huh!

I definitely recommend this book. I wish it could have been more concise, or attempted to cover fewer outcomes of the Exchange, but I'll have to trust that the author is more of an expert than I am.

This book was amazing.

I really loved the way the book was written, and the narration was superb. I feel that I am much more informed about our history.

The history of man's inventions

This is a great way to begin to grasp where things in the modern world have come from.Things we take for granted now.Sugar,rubber,silver and tobacco are all talked about extensively.I could begin to see why Europe still has the highest valued money in the world.They stole labor from Africa,and the America's.When things got too messy England cut its losses and simply left America to find its own way.They had brought over many slaves and the slaves and indigenous people outnumbered their overseers.Furthermore,they worked together and found solutions their European oppressors couldn't see due to greedy expansion and competition.My interest is peaked enough that I want to hear the predecessor to this book 1491 in the future.You could also have a look at 1421,which provides a Chinese perspective on history that is very different than what we were fed in school.It postulates that the Chinese may have arrived long before Columbus.Columbus used the maps from the Chinese to discover America.

Glaring mispronunciations of Chinese terms

The narrator keeps pronouncing q (ch sound) as k and x (sh sound) as z for Chinese terms. As China occupies a central place in this book, the repeated mispronunciations got really unbearable for me. I'm wondering whether his pronunciation of Spanish and other terms is any better?

Great History Book with A Fantastic Narrator!

I have listened to this book many times, and I am always impressed by it.

Amazing Story of our intercontinental connections!!!

Really helps with our understanding of past and current connections of cultures and the new world we are experiencing.

Food

So much of what we consider normal is part of globalization and this book will tell you all about it.

Best book I've read in the last year

I'm a junky for this kind of stuff, and after reading 1491 a few years back, I instantly bought 1493 when I saw it. Charles C Mann has an incredible knack for finding facts that are not only fascinating, but tell a story extremely well.

While 1491 focused in the Americas before Columbus, 1493 focuses on "the Columbian exchange". Basically the beginning of globalization. The connecting of two worlds and the profound impact it had on both hemispheres. Full of well done analysis, and enough amazing factoids to impress your friends at parties, this book is pure gold and Spanish silver, with Inca potatoes, and tomatoes on top, wrapped in a maize tortilla, seasoned with some Peruvian seabird guano. Delicious!

Top notch narration, too.

Great book, but...

A truly wonderful book like "1493" deserves more: the reader should have checked the pronunciation of foreign names, for instance.

If you like Jared Diamond, this is for you

What made the experience of listening to 1493 the most enjoyable?

A most interesting book about the rise of globalisation and how it has changed the world and humanity in the last 600 years.