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White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus-In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World

Name: White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus-In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World
Brand: Pantheon Books
SKU: 9780593316610
Price: 21.99 USD
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Contributors:

Jack Lohmann

Publisher:

Pantheon Books

Binding:

Hardcover

Book Category:

Science, Nature, Social Science

Book Subcategory:

Life Sciences, Rocks & Minerals, Agriculture & Food (see also Political Science

Book Topic:

Ecology, Public Policy

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Specifications +

Release Date:

03/18/25

ISBN 13:

9780593316610

Weight:

1.15 lbs

Size:

9.40 x 6.20 x 1.10 inches

Pages:

288

Mint Condition +

product description

Description

"At once lyrical and exacting, clear-sighted and deeply informed--a beautiful book." --Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky

A profound and poetic reflection on the cyclical nature of life, what happens when we break that cycle, and how to repair it--told through the fate of phosphorus

"There would be no life without constant death." So begins Jack Lohmann's remarkable debut, White Light, a mesmerizing swirl of ecology, geology, chemistry, history, agricultural science, investigative reporting, and the poetry of the natural world. Wherever life has roamed, its record is left in the sediment; over centuries, that dead matter is compacted into rock; and in that rock is phosphate--one phosphorus atom bonded to four oxygen atoms--life preserved in death, with all its surging force.
In 1842, when the naturalist John Stevens Henslow, Darwin's beloved botany professor, discovered the potential of that rock as a fertilizer, little did he know his countrymen would soon be grinding up the bones of dead soldiers and mummified Egyptian cats to exploit their phosphate content. Little did he know he'd spawn a global mining industry that would change our diets, our lifestyles, and the face of the planet.
Lohmann guides us from Henslow's Suffolk, where the phosphate fertilizer industry took root, to Bone Valley in Central Florida, where it has boomed alongside big ag--leaving wreckage like the Piney Point disaster in its wake--to far-flung Nauru, an island stripped of its life force by the ravenous young industry. We sift through the earth's geological layers and eras, speak in depth with experts and locals, and explore our past relationship with sustainable farming--including in seventeenth-century Japan, when one could pay rent with their excrement--before we started wasting just as much phosphate as we mine.
Sui generis, filled with passion and rigorous reporting, White Light invites us to renew our broken relationship not just with the earth but with our own death--and the life it brings after us.

About the Author
JACK LOHMANN is a writer from Richmond, Virginia. He moved to Mongolia in 2022. This is his first book.

ALICE MAIDEN is an illustrator based in Brooklyn.

White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus-In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World

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