Charles C. Mann's most recent book is The Wizard and the Prophet. His previous two books were 1491, which won the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Keck award for the best book of the year, and 1493, which was a New York Times best-seller. A Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Wired, he has covered the intersection of science, technology, and commerce for many newspapers and magazines here and abroad, including BioScience, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, L'Espresso, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Der Stern, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post.

In addition to 1491, he has co-written four other books, written for CD-ROMs, HBO, and the television show Law and Order; and was the text editorial coordinator for the internationally best-selling photographic projects Material World (1994), Women in the Material World (1996), and Hungry Planet (2005).

A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he 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.