Charles C. Mann (born 1955) is an American journalist and author, specializing in scientific topics. In 2006 his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus won the National Academies Communication Award for best book of the year.
He is the co-author of four books, and contributing editor for Science, The Atlantic Monthly, and Wired.
Biography Mann was born in 1955 and graduated from Amherst College in 1976. Mann has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Technology Review, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post. In 2005 he wrote 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, followed in 2011 by 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. He served as a judge for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012. He has also written for the TV series Law & Order.
He is a three-time National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his wife and children.
In 2018, Mann published The Wizard and the Prophet, which details two competing theories about the future of agriculture, population, and the environment. The titular "wizard" Mann refers to is Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prize winner credited with developing the Green Revolution and saving one billion people from starvation. Mann refers to William Vogt, an early proponent of population control, as the "prophet".
Bibliography
Books written or co-written by Mann
(with Robert P. Crease) The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics, 1st ed., New York: Macmillan, 1986; rev. ed., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996 (with Mark L. Plummer) The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991 (With Peter Menzel and Paul Kennedy) Material World: A Global Family Portrait. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994. (With Mark L. Plummer) Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species, 1995 (With David H. Freedman) @ Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion, 1997 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Knopf, 2011 UK publication: 1493: How the Ecological Collision of Europe and the Americas Gave Rise to the Modern World, Granta Books, 2011 Adaptation for children: 1493 for Young People: From Columbus's Voyage to Globalization, Seven Stories Press, 2015.
Selected articles by Mann
— "Research in Reverse: When scientists make sharp 180-degree turns in their thinking, it is often for one of two particular reasons", Scientific American, vol. 333, no. 2 (September 2025), pp. 38–42.
Reviews of books by Mann
Review of 1491 and 1493.
References
External links "An Interview with Charles C. Mann" at BookBrowse