The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance - Couverture souple

Egan, Dan

 
9781324074724: The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 1324074728 ISBN 13 : 9781324074724
Editeur : W. W. Norton & Company, 2024

Synopsis

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.

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À propos de l'auteur

Dan Egan is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and children.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
W. W. Norton & Company
Date d'édition
2024
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
1324074728
ISBN 13 
9781324074724
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
256
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9781324002666: The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  1324002662 ISBN 13 :  9781324002666
Editeur : W. W. Norton & Company, 2023
Couverture rigide