1493

Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

By: Charles C. Mann

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

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.

The top history book of the decade

Where does 1493 rank among all the audiobooks you???ve listened to so far?

This is the best book I've read all year. I've recomended it to friends and family and re-listened several times. We live in exciting times, and the fields of history and anthropology are constantly being challenged and changed as new discoveries are made. IMHO, Guns Germs and Steel set the gold standard for world history books. However, for the reasons I just mentioned, its important to keep up with emerging discoveries and new knowledge. I loved Mann's last book, 1491, for this reason. This book dramatically exceeds the previous work, no mean feat. For anyone interested in history, this is a MUST READ. Couldn't recomend more.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The chapters about colonial U.S. history were real eye-openers.

Any additional comments?

Not one to miss!

Magnificent Stowaways

Christopher Columbus, and especially the explorers and traders who followed, carried a lot more than settlers in the holds of their creaking wooden ships. Their unseen and unintended cargos would transform both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, in a global, accidental rearrangement of flora, fauna and culture that came to be known as The Columbian Exchange.

The consequences ranged from trivial to transformational. Sometimes, the world was altered in ways that could never be undone.

When British ships arrived to take on massive barrels of prized Virginia tobacco, they dumped their ballast – soil from England, containing nightcrawlers that had been entirely killed off in North America by the Ice Age. The result was more than a boon for future bass fishing. It changed the character of the native forest, with important implications for the future of agriculture and an agrarian society, not to mention the prospects for the Native Americans who had prospered on the land the way it was for thousands of years.

Malaria, the scourge of the tropical Americas, probably came from England, and may have become a significant driver of the slave trade. When shiploads of guano from South America provided the powerful natural fertilizer that coaxed abundant crops from exhausted European fields, they likely also carried the potato blight that killed a million people in Ireland and drove out a million more in The Great Famine of the mid-1800s.

“1493” is a scholarly work but never pedantic. Charles Mann is careful to separate scientific and historical fact from informed speculation. Robertson Dean delivers a clear, precise reading. A lesser narrator might complicate the wealth of information here.

Immerse yourself in the arc of history that transports you to the Jamestown settlement, Bolivian silver mines, and ancient Chinese dynasties. Or just turn to its 18 hours whenever you have a few minutes, and learn something amazing.

A fine successor to 1491

Although the story wanders from the Americas into Southeast Asia during long diversions, this is an interesting, deep plunge into the results, consequences, and benefits of The Columbian Exchange.

Riveting history

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Definitely and I already have recommended this book to a number of people.

What did you like best about this story?

The telling of the consequences of the Columbian Exchange, how the Americas and the rest of the world were profoundly affected by each other.

500 years of rollicking world history

A fascinating book. Mann splays out his curiosity and inquisitiveness over 500 years of world history. I felt at times that he rambled and got a bit lost on tangents, but I understood and recongized his general thesis. I also thought he was fair in characterizing the consequences of the "homogenocene" and globalization. It has destroyed some environments and ways of living, but it has brought with it many benefits, and it has generally raised the standard of living for millions of humans. And whether we like it or not, it is inevitable.

Robertson Dean is a fine narrator. He has a pleasing voice.