Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, the Metal that Runs the World
As the subtitle says, copper really does run the world. No matter whether you’re reading this review online, on a mobile device, or in print, you wouldn’t be reading it without copper. Nor would you be using a staggering number of modern-day conveniences and essentials—no phones, no lights, no motorcars. It’s a good metal, but it has a downside, as Carter learned when he discovered that his small vegetable garden on his property in Bisbee, Arizona, was seriously toxic. Its lead content was 32-percent higher than normal levels, but that was nothing compared to its arsenic, which was 100-percent higher than what’s considered acceptable for residential soil. Why was his soil so toxic? Turns out it’s because, for almost a century, Bisbee was a copper-mining town (the last mine closed in 1975), and the mining process has some potentially catastrophic side effects. This frequently surprising book—Did you know that the Rio Tinto copper mine in Spain has been operating for nearly 4,000 years?—chronicles Carter’s own education in the history of copper mining, in Arizona (home to 11 mines accounting for about 60-percent of the country’s copper production) and around the world. You wouldn’t think a book about copper would be an exciting read, but it is, because the story of copper mining is also the story of industrial innovation, technological revolution, and social and ecological change on a grand scale. --David Pitt