This informative and thought-provoking account of civilization\'s complete dependence on copper, and what extracting it from the earth really means for people, nature, and the global economy is "the best sort of journalism: beautifully written, rich in detail, and impossible to ignore" (Sebastian Junger).
He lives with his family in southern Arizona..
He has written for Rolling Stone , Outside , Men\'s Journal , and other publications.
He is also the director of Miss Sarajevo , an award-winning documentary produced by Bono.
about author(s): Bill Carter is the author of Red Summer: The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village
Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story about Copper, the Metal That Runs the World; and Fools Rush In: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption.
Part social history, part mining-town exploration, and part environmental investigation, this is a work of first-rate journalism That fascinates on every level.
Starting in his own backyard in the old mining town of Bisbee, Arizona--where he discovers That the dirt in his garden contains double the acceptable level of arsenic--he follows the Story of Copper to the controversial Grasberg Copper mine in Indonesia; to the "ring" at the London Metal Exchange, where a select group of traders buy and sell enormous amounts of the metal; and to an Alaskan salmon run threatened by mining.
Now , Carter delivers a blazing and fact-rich narrative That helps us understand the paradoxical relationship we have with a substance whose necessity to civilization costs the environment and the people who mine it dearly.
And the mines themselves have significant effects on the economies and wellbeing of the communities where they are located.
Copper mining causes irrevocable damage to the Earth, releasing arsenic, cyanide, sulfuric acid, and other deadly pollutants into the air and water.
Yet the hiStory of Copper extraction and our present relationship with the Metal are fraught with profound difficulties.
Today, this Metal can be found in every house, car, airplane, cell phone, computer, and home appliance around the world, including in all the new, so-called green technologies.
For most of recorded history, this remarkably pliable and sturdy substance has proven invaluable: not only did the ancient Romans build their empire on mining Copper but Christopher Columbus protected his ships from rot by lining their hulls with it.
Copper is a miraculous and contradictory metal, essential to nearly every human enterprise.
This informative and thought-provoking account of civilization\'s complete dependence on copper, and what extracting it from the earth really means for people, nature, and the global economy is "the best sort of journalism: beautifully written, rich in detail, and impossible to ignore" (Sebastian Junger)
