EBOOK
The Wizard and the Prophet
Two Groundbreaking Scientists And Their Conflicting Visions Of The Future Of Our Planet
Charles C. Mann(0)
About
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. Charles C. Mann is a correspondent for The Atlantic Science, and Wired, and has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post, and for HBO and Law & Order. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he is the recipient of the writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. His book 1491 won the National Communications Award for the best book of the year and the US National Academy of Sciences' Keck award for the best book of the year, and both 1491and the follow-up, 1493, became New York Times bestsellers. The Wizard and the Prophet tackles the biggest question we humans are facing: can the earth sustain our growing population? Our very existence is reliant on finding an answer to this one big question.
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. Charles C. Mann is a correspondent for The Atlantic Science, and Wired, and has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post, and for HBO and Law & Order. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he is the recipient of the writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. His book 1491 won the National Communications Award for the best book of the year and the US National Academy of Sciences' Keck award for the best book of the year, and both 1491and the follow-up, 1493, became New York Times bestsellers. The Wizard and the Prophet tackles the biggest question we humans are facing: can the earth sustain our growing population? Our very existence is reliant on finding an answer to this one big question.