Bøger af Charles Mann

My dad, Charles William Mann, was born in 1927 in Prescott, a small town in rural Arkansas. He left home at seventeen to work in the Houston shipyards. He then joined the Merchant Marines and sailed around the world at the end of WW II. His odyssey continued when he returned to Arkansas and married Mary Frances Ward. After holding jobs as a route salesman for the El Dorado Coffee Company, running a paint-manufacturing plant and selling life insurance, Charles went to work in the train yards of the Cotton Belt Railroad as a painter in 1964 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. That new beginning led to a position as a union labor representative with the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, a role which would ultimately carry him all the way to the national offices in Washington D.C. This miscellaneous collection of stories spans the breadth of his life from his childhood in Prescott to white collar Washington D.C. and back again. Much has been omitted or lost, but I hope that all who stop to visit the journey he took will discover something, not just about the nature of the times in which he lived, but about the special nature of the man.

I'm about to explain how a faerie in a jar completely altered my life's trajectory. And I wish I could report that it has improved!This distinct universe of dark faeries comes from the creator of the mesmerizing and emotionally devastating vampire series.Aerik, a troubled young man, must learn how to behave like a normal person in their society after being exiled from the Kingdom of Aurelia. The unloved, unwanted young faerie accepts his dismal, lonely new existence as he grows up in the foster system among kids who harass him for his pointy ears. Until Cami Dixon, a childhood acquaintance, welcomes him back to her hometown.

The startling connections between the CIA, the mob, and Sinatra's Rat Pack-from Vegas to Miami to Havana-with fresh information. With CIA spies, mob hitmen, "kompromat" sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing machines combined in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue, Mafia Spies is the authoritative account of America's most astonishing espionage plans ever.

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.