Charles Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Mann is the author of two other great history books, 1491 and 1493. One of the things that struck me was the sheer amount of grueling, monotonous, detail-intensive hard work that Norman Borlaug did to cultivate his new dwarf wheat variety that has kept literally hundreds of millions of people from starving.
