Thursday, February 16, 2012

Charles C. Mann, bestselling author of 1491 and 1493, will speak on "Uncovering the New World Columbus Created," at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 29 in the Warwick Center at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. The lecture and book signing, hosted by UNCW's Honors College, are free and open to the public.

1491, an examination of the Pre-Columbian Americas, won the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Keck Award for the best book of the year. Mann's most recent book, 1493, explores the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the world, looking at its effects on ecology, biology, trade and anthropology.

Mann has covered the intersection of science, technology and commerce for national and international newspapers and magazines, including Atlantic Monthly, Science, Wired, BioScience, The Boston Globe, Fortune, The New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair and The Washington Post. In addition to 1491 and 1493, he has co-written four other books: The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics; The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition; Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species; and @ Large: The Strange Case of the Internet's Biggest Invasion.

A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, Mann has received writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Margaret Sanger Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. His work has been featured on National Public Radio's Fresh Air.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the UNCW departments of English, history, anthropology, foreign languages and literatures, philosophy and religion, sociology and criminology, Academic Affairs, the Center for Marine Science, the Honors Scholars Association and the Mann Reading Group.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu