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A review by diegoo21
The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan
4.0
I finished reading Dan Egan's latest book a couple of weeks ago and it was a fun and fast read. I rarely do book reviews, but I feel compelled to write this one since I won it through a Goodreads giveaway. I won't fuel any conspiracy theories, but it's curious how of all the raffles I've participated, I won the one for the new book by an author whose previous book I gave five stars and even gave a brief positive review about. That book was The Life and Death of the Great Lakes, one of my favorite popular science books including a mix of history, biology/ecology, and a great dive into invasive species biology, a relatively new area of biological interest.
In this next book, Egan focuses again on what seems to be a very specific subject, to expand into issues of worldwide concern that interconnect the ecological worries about ecosystem deterioration to sociological concerns from food security to political unrests waiting just around the corner. In "The Devil's Element", the author focuses on a single element in the periodic table, phosphorus, probably not as well known as say, oxygen or nitrogen. Phosphorus, however, is an essential component of life on this planet, forming amongst other things, the backbone of all DNA and RNA sequences from viruses to whales, and also being an essential component of cellular energy currency: ATP, which has protagonistic roles in both cellular respiration and photosynthesis.
Unlike nitrogen or oxygen, phosphorus is less readily available in natural systems and constantly acts as the limiting factor for primary production. Egan relates how humans historically figured this out, at first naively in a trial and error fashion that included the use of war victim bones and then more methodologically through the alchemy of attempting to extract gold from urine. Egan's greatest asset as a science writer is his ability to find interesting stories to complement his writing, both in the historical and from the newsfeed; from the deep scientific thought process that went into proving that soap and detergent products were to blame for polluted lakes, to what happened when a criminal thought he could make a getaway by swimming through a toxic algae infected canal. These are the stories that stay with you and that I have found myself telling in both classroom and everyday interactions.
Although the focus of the book is on the United States, Egan also manages to explain the global implications of the day when the US depletes its most readily available phosphorus sources and turns to the biggest deposit in Western Sahara, a region that despite its richness in a product that makes modern day farming possible, still holds human communities living in extreme poverty.
Overall, The Devil's Element does what a good popular science book should do; it informs and entertains you equally while making you think about a topic you probably hadn't given much thought to. I'm really curious as to where Egan will take us next.
In this next book, Egan focuses again on what seems to be a very specific subject, to expand into issues of worldwide concern that interconnect the ecological worries about ecosystem deterioration to sociological concerns from food security to political unrests waiting just around the corner. In "The Devil's Element", the author focuses on a single element in the periodic table, phosphorus, probably not as well known as say, oxygen or nitrogen. Phosphorus, however, is an essential component of life on this planet, forming amongst other things, the backbone of all DNA and RNA sequences from viruses to whales, and also being an essential component of cellular energy currency: ATP, which has protagonistic roles in both cellular respiration and photosynthesis.
Unlike nitrogen or oxygen, phosphorus is less readily available in natural systems and constantly acts as the limiting factor for primary production. Egan relates how humans historically figured this out, at first naively in a trial and error fashion that included the use of war victim bones and then more methodologically through the alchemy of attempting to extract gold from urine. Egan's greatest asset as a science writer is his ability to find interesting stories to complement his writing, both in the historical and from the newsfeed; from the deep scientific thought process that went into proving that soap and detergent products were to blame for polluted lakes, to what happened when a criminal thought he could make a getaway by swimming through a toxic algae infected canal. These are the stories that stay with you and that I have found myself telling in both classroom and everyday interactions.
Although the focus of the book is on the United States, Egan also manages to explain the global implications of the day when the US depletes its most readily available phosphorus sources and turns to the biggest deposit in Western Sahara, a region that despite its richness in a product that makes modern day farming possible, still holds human communities living in extreme poverty.
Overall, The Devil's Element does what a good popular science book should do; it informs and entertains you equally while making you think about a topic you probably hadn't given much thought to. I'm really curious as to where Egan will take us next.