REGISTRATION REQUIRED – All book discussion sign-ups announced at the beginning of the semester on the Honors listserv

• Book: THE DEVIL’S ELEMENT: PHOSPHORUS AND A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE by Dan Egan
• Discussion Leader: Dr. Amy Rosemond, Distinguished Research Professor of Ecology
• Date: Monday, November 6, 6:00-8:00pm
• Location: Dr. Rosemond’s home (address will be sent to registrants)
• Description: Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. 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.

Contact: Kora Burton, k.burton@uga.edu.