To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Good Reads  History & Other Humanities  Environmental History

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

New
By: Dan Egan(Author)
256 pages
The Devil's Element
Click to have a closer look
Select version
  • The Devil's Element ISBN: 9781324074724 Paperback Jun 2024 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £14.99
    #262542
  • The Devil's Element ISBN: 9781324002666 Hardback Apr 2023 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £23.99
    #260337
Selected version: £14.99
About this book Customer reviews Biography Related titles

About this book

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, and 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.

Customer Reviews

Biography

Dan Egan is the author of 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.

New
By: Dan Egan(Author)
256 pages
Media reviews

"A revelatory book that exposes human use of [phosphorus] as a double-edged sword capable of sustaining and destroying life."
Booklist (starred review)

"[Egan] builds a story of innovation, failure, recovery, and looming catastrophe [...] [A] deep humanity resides in his writing."
– Garin Cycholl, Chicago Review of Books

"Disquieting [...] A fine account, worthy of fertile discussion, of yet another environmental disaster."
Kirkus Reviews

"In his crisply written new book [...] Dan Egan sounds alarms on both the scarcity and overabundance sides of the phosphorus-human equation."
– Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"A cautionary history [...] This will ignite readers' curiosity."
Publishers Weekly

"An enjoyable, lively, and thought-provoking read [...] [P]eppered with fascinating details [...] I highly recommend The Devil's Element, which presents an easily digestible introduction to a major global issue."
– Robert W. Howarth, Science

"In the tradition of environmental clarion calls like Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction [...] The Devil's Element urges readers to confront another quietly unfolding disaster [...] Egan, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work chronicling the threats facing the Great Lakes, has a knack for telling big, unwieldy stories through absorbing personal narratives."
– Julia Rosen, Undark

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksBest of WinterNHBS Moth TrapBuyers Guides