Release Date:- 2023-03-07
Reviews Counts:- 10
User Average Rating:- 4.5
Availability:- In Stock
Kind:- ebook
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
"Livelyā¦and thought-provoking.ā āRobert W. Howarth, Science
The New York Times best-selling author on the source of great bountyāand now great perilāall over the world.
Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But itās also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called āthe oil of our time.ā
The story of phosphorus spans the globe and vast tracts of human history. First discovered in a seventeenth-century alchemy lab in Hamburg, it soon became a highly sought-after resource. The race to mine phosphorus took people from the battlefields of Waterloo, which were looted for the bones of fallen soldiers, to the fabled guano islands off Peru, the Bone Valley of Florida, and the sand dunes of the Western Sahara. Over the past century, phosphorus has made farming vastly more productive, feeding the enormous increase in the human population. Yet, as Egan harrowingly reports, our overreliance on this vital crop nutrient is today causing toxic algae blooms and ādead zonesā in waterways from the coasts of Florida to the Mississippi River basin to the Great Lakes and beyond. Egan also explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwideāwhich risks rising conflict and even war.
With The Devilās Element, Egan has written an essential and eye-opening account that urges us to pay attention to one of the most perilous but little-known environmental issues of our time.