Vrijdag 2 februari: Charles Mann geeft lezing in Leiden

Occasional Lecture

On Friday February 2, 2007,


Charles C. Mann

will feature as invited speaker
to discuss the arguments presented in his best-selling book

‘1491. New revelations of the Americas before Columbus’


Venue: Kamerlingh Onnesgebouw, Room A144.
The lecture will commence at 8 PM.

The lecture will end with time for a plenary discussion with the author.

Attendance is free of charge and open to all. For the required registration please contact Alex Geurds (a.geurds@let.leidenuniv.nl / 527.2173).

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Time Magazine • Boston Globe • Discover Magazine
Amazon.com • San Francisco Chronicle
USA Today • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
——————
New York Times Bestseller • San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller


“An eye-opening book that requires us to rethink virtually every assumption we have had about the Western Hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans.”
- Jan Dizard, Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of American Culture, Amherst College

“Marvelous ... a sweeping portrait of human life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus ... Mann navigates adroitly through the controversies. He approaches each in the best scientific tradition, carefully sifting the evidence, never jumping to hasty conclusions, giving everyone a fair hearing—the experts and the amateurs; the accounts of the Indians and their conquerors. A remarkably engaging writer, he lucidly explains the significance of everything from haplogroups to glottochronology to landraces. He offers amusing asides to some of his adventures across the hemisphere during the course of his research, but unlike so many contemporary journalists, he never lets his personal experiences overwhelm his subject.”
- Kevin Bacon, New York Times Book Review

“We all know the first Americans wrote, built cities, and erected monuments, but they also changed the landscape. Well-informed in the ways of Aztec, Inca, Maya, Amazonian and Mound Builder, Mann engagingly reviews the social, environmental, and even the genetic conditions that set up the conquest that would follow the clash between two worlds—a clash not only among cultures but among ecosystems as well.”
- Anthony Aveni, author of Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico and Empires of Time

“The nonfiction book that impressed me most in 2005.”
- Ronald Wright, Times Literary Supplement (London)

This book is also available in a Dutch translation, published by Nieuw Amsterdam (2005).