Author Charles C. Mann, February 11, 2007
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before ColumbusSunday, February 11, 2007, 2:00 p.m., Community Room
Needham Free Public Library, 1139 Highland Avenue, Needham, MA
Free and open to the public
Refreshments
Sponsored by the Friends of the Library
What was the Western Hemisphere like before Europeans arrived? Most of us have a few impressions from school long ago, or from movies and the popular culture: Columbus, the conquistadores, and the first Thanksgiving. Most of those ideas are wrong, says author Charles C. Mann in his bestselling book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005), which distills research of recent decades on the pre-Columbian Americas.
For example, the Americas may have had a larger population than previously assumed. There were multiple cultures and languages and large cities. Much of the natural environment in the Americas may have been shaped by human activity before European colonization. Although history tends to remember dramatic confrontations between the residents and the new arrivals, the communicable diseases the Europeans unwittingly imported—to which the natives had no immunity—played a bigger role in the reduction of native populations than any military conflicts.
1491 received very positive reviews, was on several bestseller lists, and was on several lists of the best books of the year. For samples of the critical response to the book, click here.
Charles C. Mann is a science journalist and writer. He has co-authored several books: @Large: The Strange Case of the World’s Biggest Internet Invasion(1998); Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species(1995); The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine and 100 Years of Rampant Competition(1991); and The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics(1986, rev. ed. 1995). His articles have appeared in Science, Techology Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Wired. For more information about the author, click here.
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