Charles C. Mann

American science journalist and author, known for turning deep research across anthropology, history, ecology, and economics into bestselling narrative non-fiction. His books 1491 and 1493 reshaped the popular understanding of the pre-Columbian Americas and the Columbian Exchange; The Wizard and the Prophet frames the modern environmental debate through two duelling twentieth-century scientists — Norman Borlaug, the techno-optimist ‘wizard’, and William Vogt, the limits-minded ‘prophet’.

In the wiki

• Charles C. Mann on Shaping Tomorrow’s World and the Limits to Growth — Conversations with Tyler: the Wizard-and-Prophet frame for environmental futures, whether an ecosystem is a real ‘system’, demographic transition, and the pre-Columbian population revisionism behind 1491.

See also

• Tyler Cowen — host
• Joel Mokyr — the culture-of-growth and limits-to-growth debate
• Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth
• Brad DeLong on Intellectual and Technical Progress
• William MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Moral Progress, and Cultural Innovation
• Carl Zimmer on the Hidden Life in the Air We Breathe
• Abundance (book)