Bøger af Dan Egan

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.

"Sheltered in a snow cave on Mount Elbrus in 1990, I stared into the mouth of a storm on the tallest peak on the European continent, a merciless mountain that claims more lives per year than Everest. When I emerged from the white haze of that storm alive, after so many had perished, I had no idea how this event would impact the next 30 years of my life."My brother John and I-known as the Egan Brothers-could be seen on the Discovery Channel, ESPN, and were featured in twelve Warren Miller Ski Films during the 1980s and 1990s. We found our place in history as storytellers and East Coast renegades of skiing, and were inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2017."Thirty Years in a White Haze is a tale of trials, success, and loss told through worldwide adventure and the evolution of extreme skiing as thirty years of haze dissipates to clarity."-Dan Egan

The Great Lakes-Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior-hold 20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan's compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.