1493: How the Exchange Between the New and Old World Shaped Today

This book presents a deeply compelling story about the most remarkable biological event since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of the global network of ecological and economic exchange in China, initiated by Christopher Columbus and, eight decades later, by the Spaniard Legazpi, fueled the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, dismantled Africa, and, for two centuries, made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world.