Pun Salad

I read 1491 by Charles C. Mann back in 2011 and found it interesting enough to follow up with 1493. (As always: thanks to the library of the University Near Here for getting it.) Mann's topic is broad: how Columbus's journey upset the entire world's apple cart, with many of the apples still rolling around today.

It's a daunting subject, and one could (and some do) spend one's entire life in its study. But (fortunately) Mann is not a professional historian, he's a journalist, and this book (like 1491) concentrates on good stories and provocative ideas.

Those stories have a strong scientific component. Mann writes engagingly and comfortably in the realms of climate, ecology, biology, epidemiology, and other disciplines. It's a story of invasive species and ecological chaos, brought about mostly by human beings' lust for power and money. (Not that there's anything wrong with the latter.) Rubber, silk, silver, tobacco, potatoes, etc.; all started swirling around the globe with mostly unexpected consequences.

As did disease. It's well known what smallpox, introduced by Europeans into the Americas did to the folks already living here. Mann also documents the massive toll that malaria and yellow fever took on the incoming Europeans. (He raises the interesting point that slavery established itself in the South most firmly because Africans were more resistant to tropical disease than the other primary source of workers, indentured servants.)

Mann is a diligent researcher, visiting many of the historical sites he writes about, describing his encounters and observations. It's not all interesting, but a lot of it is. Recommended for even the person not all that interested in history.