While on leave recently in Maui, I started reading this book on the global, systemic impacts – ecological, economic, infrastructure, health, agriculture, and others – of the Columbia Exchange.  It is written by a great journalist, Charles Mann, and it is wonderfully readable – quite a page turner.  What I found especially interesting about it is the system of systems perspective that the author takes on the global consequences of events.  While not express in the terminology we might use ourselves, it is a wonderful demonstration of what a Global Systems Science could accomplish.  It also suggests (to me) the value of people, such as Charles Mann, who do not look at these problems from the perspective of a single discipline, but rather can take a broader, more integrative point of view.   More…