Having said that if you have an index, your db.col.find().sort({"field":-1}).limit(1) will read one index entry - even if the index is default ascending and you wanted the max entry and one value from the collection.
select age from table_name order by age desc limit 1
我们也可以用蒙哥布语写。
db.getCollection('collection_name').find().sort({"age" : -1}).limit(1); //max age
db.getCollection('collection_name').find().sort({"age" : 1}).limit(1); //min age