What Happened After Columbus Arrived

摘要

Let us suppose that before the creation, God was subject to NEPA and required to write an environmental impact statement, describing what would happen to the world He so carefully created. Suppose, too, that He could predict with precision all that followed and is unfolding now. His statement completed, would He go forward? Of the questions that arise while reading Charles Mann's new book, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, this is the most frequent, and it is probably quite unintended. Mann does not pose the question. His task is to assemble from bits and pieces the story of what happened to the world - not just America, the entire world - after Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean islands in 1492.