Boom, Bust, Boom : A Story about Copper, the Metal That Runs the World

by Carter, Bill

• ISBN13: 9781439136447
• ISBN10: 1439136440
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-16
• Publisher: Scribner

Summary

From "a first-rate writer in the fascinating tradition of Junger and Krakauer" (Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall), a sweeping account of civilization's complete dependence on copper and what it all means for people, nature, and the global economy. With books like Red Summerand Fools Rush In, Bill Carter has earned a reputation as an on-the-ground journalist adept at connecting the local elements of a story to its largest implications. He does it againand brilliantlyin Boom, Bust, Boom, relating the very human dimension of copper extraction to the colossal implications the industry has for every single one of us. After sickening himself with the vegetables he grew in his backyard, Carter learns that the soil in his local Bisbee, Arizona, has100% higher levels than the acceptable amounts of arsenic in it: the result of copper mining. The revelation spawns a full-scale exploration of the history, culture, and economics of copper, a precious metal thatunlike goldis part of nearly every electrical device created by man and without which modern civilization itself would come to a halt. From communities living in the toxic presence of mines to "the ring" at the London Metal Exchange, where a select group of traders buy and sell enormous amounts of copper, Carter blends the personal and the international in a narrative that helps us understand the paradoxical relationship we all share with a substance whose necessity to civilization costs the environment and the people who mine it dearly. The result is a work of first-rate journalism that fascinates on many levels.