![]() ![]() ![]() The book’s 400 pages aren’t all easy reading, said Bruce Watson in the San Francisco Chronicle. Mann’s argument is that 1492 marked the beginning of a grand homogenization of life on the planet, and he “makes even the most unpromising-sounding subjects fascinating.” And we haven’t even begun to talk about the movements of corn, potatoes, and earthworms. Because disease wiped out about three quarters of the Americas’ indigenous populations, forests in North America grew unchecked and probably contributed to the “little ice age” of 1550 to 1750. In part because Africans were genetically resistant to malaria, they became favored as slaves in the New World and greatly outnumbered Europeans here until the 19th century. ![]() Not for long, it turns out, were Europeans the main players in the Western Hemisphere’s population upheaval. Almost every reader “will find something that challenges his assumptions,” said Ian Morris in The New York Times. ![]()
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