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

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Notes From Your Bookseller
Notes From Your Bookseller

Heroes and villains, bounty and devastation, soldiers and skeletons. Who would guess that a tale of phosphorus, a mineral both sustaining and lethal, would have such an astonishing story and such a rambunctious history? But in the hands of Dan Egan, author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes (a New York Times bestseller and winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award), we might have guessed! The Devil’s Element is a compelling alchemy of accessible science, history, policy, human drama and reportage.

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year "Lively…and thought-provoking.” —Robert W. Howarth, Science The New York Times best-selling author on the source of great bounty—and now great peril—all over the world.

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 environ...