The Wizard and the Prophet

Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World

Charles C. Mann | 2019, Pan Macmillan

In forty years, the Earth’s population will reach ten billion. Can our world support so many people? What kind of world will it be? In this unique, original and essential book, Charles C. Mann illuminates the four grand challenges we face—food, water, energy, and 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. He believed that if we use 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 would 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 Prophet 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.

Bibliography

Mann, C. (2019) The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Stuttgart, Germany: Pan Macmillan.