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

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