Award-Winning Author Charles C. Mann Opens Wooster Forum Series

Pre-Columbus Americas the topic of first lecture on Sept. 20 in McGaw Chapel

WOOSTER, Ohio — American author Charles C. Mann will shed light on the pre-Columbus Americas, with a special focus on the indigenous peoples of the New World, when he talks about his award-winning book,1491: New Revelations of the America’s Before Columbus, at the first Wooster Forum event on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:30 p.m. in McGaw Chapel (340 E. University St.).

A prolific writer, Mann has served as a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Wired. He has also written for BioScience, The Boston Globe, Fortune, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, as well as Panorama (Italy), Paris-Match (France), Quark (Japan), and Geo (Germany).

In 1491, which received the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Keck Best Book of the Year award, Mann argues that the indigenous peoples of the Americas settled earlier, were more numerous, and had a higher degree of cultural sophistication than originally thought. In 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, his latest book, Mann chronicles Columbus’s second voyage, which established the first noteworthy European settlement in the Americas, ending the separation of the hemispheres and igniting an ecological response known as the “Columbian Exchange.” The book is currently ninth on The New York Times Best Seller List.

Mann’s other credits include work for HBO and the television show “Law and Order.” He was also the text editorial coordinator for the international best-selling photographic projects Material World (1994), Women in the Material World (1996), and Hungry Planet (2005). 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.

The next Wooster Forum event will be Tuesday, Oct. 4, when Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American author, addresses race, gender, and family values in relation to Haitian culture. Additional information about the Wooster Forum is available online, by phone (330-263-2132), and via e-mail.