White Light
The Elemental Role of Phosphorus-in Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World
1 of 2 copies available
A 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, discovered the potential of that rock as a fertilizer, little did he know his countrymen would soon be grinding up the bones of dead soldiers and mummified Egyptian cats to exploit their phosphate content. Little did he know he’d spawn a global mining industry that would change our diets, our lifestyles, and the face of the planet.
Lohmann guides us from Henslow’s Suffolk, where the phosphate fertilizer industry took root, to Bone Valley in Central Florida, where it has boomed alongside big ag—leaving wreckage like the Piney Point disaster in its wake—to far-flung Nauru, an island stripped of its life force by the ravenous young industry. We sift through the earth’s geological layers and eras, speak in depth with experts and locals, and explore our past relationship with sustainable farming—including in seventeenth-century Japan, when one could pay rent with their excrement—before we started wasting just as much phosphate as we mine.
Sui generis, filled with passion and rigorous reporting, White Light invites us to renew our broken relationship not just with the earth but with our own death—and the life it brings after us.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 18, 2025 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798217018482
- File size: 303916 KB
- Duration: 10:33:08
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 6, 2025
In this winding debut history, science writer Lohmann traces how phosphorus has shaped the natural world and human history. Describing the phosphorus cycle, he explains that weathering redistributes the element from rock to soil, where it’s absorbed by plants that are eaten by animals who return the phosphorus to the earth in the form of dung. The nutrients contained in the chemical compound phosphate have made it a highly valued fertilizer, Lohmann writes, recounting how in 17th-century Japan, some landlords collected rent in the form of phosphate-rich human excrement. Elsewhere, he describes how alchemist Hennig Brand’s accidental 1669 discovery of phosphorus while attempting to distill gold from urine led to the creation of matches, how white phosphorus bombs have been used in battle for more than a century in defiance of international law, and how phosphate mining in Florida has increased residents’ risk of developing cancer (deposits there are high in radioactive uranium). Though the history intrigues, the prose can feel contrived (“A world had fallen into ruin, and we were set within its midst,” Lohmann writes of destructive strip mining on the Pacific island of Nauru). Still, it’s a stimulating study. Illus. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management.
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