The Wizard and the Prophet

Starred review from November 27, 2017
Journalist Mann (1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created) clearly illustrates two opposing outlooks for dealing with major problems facing humankind, using two 20th-century scientists as exemplars. Mann straightforwardly states that this book does not provide “a blueprint for tomorrow.” Rather, it’s an account of difficulties facing humans and ways to approach them. William Vogt (1902–1968), who serves as Mann’s “prophet,” regarded human overconsumption as a potential source of humanity’s downfall and saw restraint as the only possible recourse. Mann’s “wizard” is Norman Borlaug (1914–2009), a leading figure in the “green revolution” of agricultural technology. For followers of Borlaug, science and technology hold the solutions to the problems that beset humankind. Mann juxtaposes these two lives and ideologies while briefly introducing a third viewpoint—that of biologist Lynn Margulis, who posited that humankind is doomed to extinction like any other “successful species.” In tracing the lives of Vogt and Borlaug, Mann describes how proponents of the two contrasting viewpoints that they epitomize suggest that humans should confront the challenges of providing food, clean water, and energy to an ever-growing population on a planet undergoing climate change. Neither ideology, he points out, is assured to bring humankind success. Without taking sides, Mann delivers a fine examination of two possible paths to a livable future.

November 15, 2017
A dual biography of two significant figures who "had little regard" for each other's work but "were largely responsible for the creation of the basic intellectual blueprints that institutions around the world use today for understanding our environmental dilemmas."A thick book featuring two scientists unknown to most readers is a tough sell, but bestselling journalist and historian Mann (1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, 2011, etc.), a correspondent for the Atlantic, Science, and Wired, turns in his usual masterful performance. Nobel Prize-winning agronomist Norman Borlaug (1914-2009) developed high-yield wheat varieties and championed agricultural techniques that led to the "Green Revolution," vastly increasing world food production. Ornithologist William Vogt (1902-1968) studied the relationship between resources and population and wrote the 1948 bestseller Road to Survival, a founding document of modern environmentalism in which the author maintains that current trends will lead to overpopulation and mass hunger. Borlaug and Vogt represent two sides of a centurylong dispute between what Mann calls "wizards," who believe that science will allow humans to continue prospering, and "prophets," who predict disaster unless we accept that our planet's resources are limited. Beginning with admiring biographies, the author moves on to the environmental challenges the two men symbolize. Agriculture will require a second green revolution by 2050 to feed an estimated 10 billion inhabitants. Only 1 percent of Earth's water is fresh and accessible; three-quarters goes to agriculture, and shortages are already alarming. More than 1.2 billion people still lack electricity; whether to produce more or use less energy bitterly divides both sides. Neither denies that human activities are wreaking havoc with Earth's climate. Mann's most spectacular accomplishment is to take no sides. Readers will thrill to the wizards' astounding advances and believe the prophets' gloomy forecasts, and they will also discover that technological miracles produce nasty side effects and that self-sacrifice, as prophets urge, has proven contrary to human nature.An insightful, highly significant account that makes no predictions but lays out the critical environmental problems already upon us.

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January 1, 2018

Best-selling author and journalist Mann (1491; 1493) tackles the thorny problem of humankind's future through the lens of two 20th-century visionaries: apocalyptic environmentalist William Vogt and Green Revolution founder Norman Borlaug. Vogt, a self-trained ornithologist and author of The Road to Survival, serves as the book's Prophet, decrying the damages of human consumption and advocating passionately for measures to combat overpopulation. Borlaug, by contrast, is the Wizard; a Nobel Prize-winning plant pathologist with decades worth of work breeding new forms of high-yielding disease-resistant wheat, highlighting human innovation as a primary solution to problems of hunger and population growth. From the outset, Mann sets up Vogt and Borlaug as representatives of two related yet opposing philosophies that force readers to question how today's leaders should best invest their time to ensure a better tomorrow. How would disciples of Vogt and Borlaug approach problems of global demand for food, water, and energy? What could each contribute to threats of climate change? By showing Vogt and Borlaug's successes and mistakes, Mann counsels us to hope even as we cannot agree on how best to proceed. VERDICT A sweeping, provocative work of journalism, history, science and philosophy. Highly recommended for fans and students of environmental studies, social sciences, and contemporary nonfiction.--Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2017
Environmental issues are complicated, and we often find ourselves of two minds about how we should address them. Much-lauded journalist Mann, also the author of two best-selling history books, 1493 (2011) and 1491 (2005), pegs our divided outlooks to two seminal yet overlooked scientists whose opposing viewpoints underlie the two primary channels through which environmental thought and practices flow. William Vogt is the Prophet. A book-loving boy enchanted by then-bucolic Long Island, he came to perceive that all species, ours included, are part of ecosystems ruled by biological law, and urged people to live within and preserve nature's intricate balance and finite resources. The Wizard is Norman Borlaug. Raised on a subsistence Iowa family farm, he became a tenacious plant geneticist who launched the Green Revolution of the 1960s and steadfastly championed science as the way to meet our species' needs. As Mann profiles, with verve and infectious fascination, both brilliant, questing men, he places their extraordinary adventures and achievements within a dynamically detailed, global scientific and geopolitical context and tracks their profound influence on our struggles over energy, fresh water, and agriculture as climate change accelerates and humankind surges toward the 10-billion mark. This unique, encompassing, clarifying, engrossing, inquisitive, and caring work of multifaceted research, synthesis, and analysis humanizes the challenges and contradictions of modern environmentalism and our struggle toward a viable future.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A full schedule of media appearances, a national author tour, and a robust, diversified publicity campaign will support popular-writer Mann's fresh and stimulating look at a crucial subject.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)