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The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
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W. W. Norton & Company 2017
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New York Times Bestseller

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award



"Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.... Egan's book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review


The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan's compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
03/07/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780393246445
ASIN:
B01HDSU3SU
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Dan Egan. (2017). The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. W. W. Norton & Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Dan Egan. 2017. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. W. W. Norton & Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Dan Egan. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:42:37
Date Updated:
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      • bioText: Dan Egan is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and children.
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New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award

"Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.... Egan's book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review

The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan's compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for...

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title
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
fullDescription

New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award

"Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.... Egan's book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review

The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan's compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

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reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Louise Erdrich
      • content: Suspenseful, superbly informative, crucial.
      • premium: False
      • source: Vicky Albritton and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson;Los Angeles Review of Books
      • content: Fascinating and brilliant... Egan's narrative often moves like a thriller.
      • premium: False
      • source: Lekelia Danielle Jenkins;Science
      • content: Easy to read, offering well-paced, intellectually stimulating arguments, bolstered by well-researched and captivating narratives.
      • premium: False
      • source: Judges' citation, Grantham Award of Special Merit for Environmental Beat Reporting
      • content: Dan Egan has done more than any other journalist in America to chronicle the decline of this once-great ecosystem.
      • premium: False
      • source: Susan Glaser;Cleveland Plain Dealer
      • content: A compelling chronicle of the many, many (many) man-caused hazards that have threatened the largest source of accessible freshwater in the world.
      • premium: False
      • source: Anne Moore;Crain's Chicago Business
      • content: A marvelous work of nonfiction, which tells the story of humanity's interference with the natural workings of the world's largest unfrozen freshwater system.
      • premium: False
      • source: Meghan O'Gieblyn;Boston Review
      • content: Important.... Egan's book serves as a reminder that the ecological universe we inhabit is vastly connected and cannot be easily mended by humility and good intentions.
      • premium: False
      • source: Margaret Quamme;Columbus Dispatch
      • content: Egan's knowledge, both deep and wide, comes through on every page, and his clear writing turns what could be confusing or tedious material into a riveting story.
      • premium: False
      • source: Danielle S. Furlich;Nature Conservancy magazine
      • content: Brings the Great Lakes' decline—and moments of rebirth—to life.... Firsthand tales from the people directly involved in the Great Lakes' unfolding ecological drama drive Egan's brisk narrative forward.
      • premium: False
      • source: National Book Review
      • content: A literary clarion call.... Egan's narrative reflects a nuanced understanding of history and science, which is matched by his keen perceptions about public policy.
      • premium: False
      • source: Kerri Arsenault;Literary Hub
      • content: This book feels urgent to policymakers and laypersons alike.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        January 2, 2017
        Egan, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, effectively calls attention to the inherent fragility of the Great Lakes in this thought-provoking investigation, providing a modern history of the lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—and the problems that have plagued them. He takes readers “beneath the lakes’ shimmering surface and illuminates an ongoing and unparalleled ecological unraveling.” Egan starts the discussion by examining the 1950s construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of locks, canals, and channels connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Supporters had hoped landlocked cities such as Chicago and Cleveland would in time become global commercial ports rivaling New York City and Tokyo. Subsequent chapters deal with some of the project’s unintended consequences. Non-native species began showing up in the Great Lakes. Zebra mussels, once found primarily in the Caspian and Black Sea basins, hitchhiked their way across the Atlantic in the ballast tanks of freighters. Able to fuse themselves to hard surfaces and grow “in wickedly sharp clusters,” zebra mussels can clog pipes, cause significant damage to boats, and “suck the plankton—the life—out of the waters they invade.” Egan highlights a range of issues that have affected these crucial waterways for decades.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        Starred review from February 1, 2017
        An alarming account of the "slow-motion catastrophe" facing the world's largest freshwater system.Based on 13 years of reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this exhaustively detailed examination of the Great Lakes reveals the extent to which this 94,000-square-mile natural resource has been exploited for two centuries. The main culprits have been "over-fishing, over-polluting, and over-prioritizing navigation," writes Egan, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Combining scientific details, the stories of researchers investigating ecological crises, and interviews with people who live and work along the lakes, the author crafts an absorbing narrative of science and human folly. The St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of locks, canals, and channels leading to the Atlantic Ocean, which allows "noxious species" from foreign ports to enter the lakes through ballast water dumped by freighters, has been a central player. Biologically contaminated ballast water is "the worst kind of pollution," writes Egan. "It breeds." As a result, mussels and other invasive species have been devastating the ecosystem and traveling across the country to wreak harm in the West. At the same time, farm-fertilizer runoff has helped create "massive seasonal toxic algae blooms that are turning [Lake] Erie's water into something that seems impossible for a sea of its size: poison." The blooms contain "the seeds of a natural and public health disaster." While lengthy and often highly technical, Egan's sections on frustrating attempts to engineer the lakes by introducing predator fish species underscore the complexity of the challenge. The author also covers the threats posed by climate change and attempts by outsiders to divert lake waters for profit. He notes that the political will is lacking to reduce farm runoffs. The lakes could "heal on their own," if protected from new invasions and if the fish and mussels already present "find a new ecological balance." Not light reading but essential for policymakers--and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water.

        COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        November 1, 2016
        Winner of the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism and twice a Pulitzer Prize finalist for reporting that contributed to this book, Egan limns the terrible ecological threat to the Great Lakes. With a six-city tour.

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        December 1, 2016

        Milwaukee Sentinel Journal's Egan, "beat reporter" on the Great Lakes since 2003, examines the ecological and economic havoc caused by invasive species and also considers problems such as fluctuating lake levels and future threats including water diversion schemes. He shows how big engineering, canal building in particular, opened the lakes to shipping but also swung open the "front" (e.g., the Saint Lawrence Seaway) and "back" (e.g., Chicago Canal system) doors to nonindigenous aquatic species. Some critters hitchhiked in the ballast tanks of ships; others were carried in by the currents or swam. Swamp draining and river dredging have played their own pernicious parts in "unstitching a delicate ecological web more than 10,000 years in the making." Egan offers some bold solutions to slow the damage (e.g., develop better ballast disinfection systems, close the Saint Lawrence Seaway to ocean freighters, shut the Chicago Canal) but admits that obstacles such as the shipping lobby and foot-dragging politicians are formidable. Egan skillfully mixes science, history, and reportage to craft a compelling story. If, as he asserts, "the biggest threat to the Great Lakes right now is our own ignorance," then this book stands as important, timely mitigation. VERDICT This outstanding addition to science collections will appeal to general readers.--Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.

        Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity
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publisher
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bisacCodes
      • code: HIS036090
      • description: History / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
      • code: NAT018000
      • description: Nature / Ecosystems & Habitats / Lakes, Ponds & Swamps
      • code: SCI026000
      • description: Science / Environmental Science