The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance
| Quantity | Price | Discount |
|---|---|---|
| List Price | $30.00 | |
| 1 - 24 | $25.50 | 15% |
| 25 - 99 | $21.00 | 30% |
| 100 - 499 | $19.50 | 35% |
| 500 + | $18.90 | 37% |
$30.00
Book Information
| Publisher: | W. W. Norton & Company |
|---|---|
| Publish Date: | 03/07/2023 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| ISBN-13: | 9781324002666 |
| ISBN-10: | 1324002662 |
| Language: | English |
What We're Saying
From the 414 area code, on 4/14, we've created a booklist to celebrate Milwaukee-based and Milwaukee-raised authors on Milwaukee Day. READ FULL DESCRIPTION
Phosphorus is a bringer of both life and death, but the balance has been tilted toward the destruction and environmental degradation of many places across the world over the years. Dan Egan explores the history of human activity in securing and using this vital element, and how we can begin to tilt the balance back toward the productive and life-giving qualities of phosphorus that all life on Earth relies upon. READ FULL DESCRIPTION
Full Description
Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it's 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 "the oil of our time."
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 "dead zones" 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 worldwide--which risks rising conflict and even war.
With The Devil's 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.
