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

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

Bill Carter . Scribner, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4391-3644-7

After becoming violently ill from eating his own garden vegetables, journalist Bill Carter (Red Summer) was shocked to discover that his yard was laced with heavy metals. High levels of lead and toxic amounts of arsenic were present in Carter's soil courtesy of the copper mines that once operated in and around his town of Bisbee, Arizona. It turns out that modern civilization is entirely dependent on this mineral, which can be found in everything from cell phones, cars, stoves, to even fabrics. Therein lay Carter's problem: it's something we can't live without, yet something nobody wants to live near. Carter struggles with this Gordian knot, talking to scrap metal dealers that pay top dollar for salvaged%E2%80%94and often stolen%E2%80%94copper, those who live and work in the mining towns, and the oligarchs who run the companies. The book becomes something of a circular discussion as Carter hears the same platitudes of environmental and fiscal responsibility bandied about by one mining company after another, only to find the opposite in many cases, but it makes for fascinating reading about an industry and a mineral most of us take for granted. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. (Oct.)