The Wizard and the Prophet

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, the population of the Earth will reach ten billion. Can our world support so many people? What kind of world will it be? In this unique, original and important book, Charles C. Mann illuminates the four great challenges we face - food, water, energy, climate change - through an exploration of the crucial work and wide-ranging influence of two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt. Vogt (the Prophet) was the intellectual forefather of the environmental movement, and believed that in our using more than the planet has to give, our prosperity will bring us to ruin. Borlaug''s research in the 1950s led to the development of modern high-yield crops that have saved millions from starvation. The Wizard of Mann''s title, he believed that science will continue to rise to the challenges we face. Mann tells the stories of these scientists and their crucial influence on today''s debates as his story ranges from Mexico to India, across continents and oceans and from the past and the present to the future. Brilliantly original in concept, wryly observant and deeply researched, The Wizard and the Prophe t is essential reading for readers of Yuval Noah Harari''s Sapiens or Jared Diamond''s Guns, Germs and Steel , for anyone interested in how we got here and in the future of our species.

Préface
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.

Auteur
Charles C. Mann, a correspondent for The Atlantic, Science and Wired, has written for Fortune, the New York Times, Vanity Fair and the Washington Post, as well as for HBO and 'Law & Order'. A three-time US National Magazine Award finalist and the author of three previous books. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus won the US National Academies Communication Award for the best book of the year, and both that book and its sequel, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, were New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Texte du rabat

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.