A bookish blog post
In the fall of 1898 Sir William Crookes (right) gave his inaugural address as the incoming president of the British Academy of Sciences. Unlike the typical such speech, this one was prophetic and alerted the British populace for the first time to a real and growing problem. And the populace began to worry, because Sir William was the Al Gore of his day, alerting his country (and the world) to a looming danger.
Other than prophesying disaster, however, there were a few notable differences between Sir William and Al Gore. First and foremost, Sir William was a true scientist, not a bloated former politician with no technical training. He was the inventor of the predecessor of the tubes later used in televisions and radios and had discovered and added thallium to the periodic table. The second major difference is that his worries were valid. They weren’t concocted from a gibberish of people hoping to cash in on the public’s fears of an imaginary melting of the earth, but were born of a serious concern for the continued success of the human race. Or at the very least, the continued success of the people of Great Britain.
Sir William Crookes was deeply (and rightfully) concerned that the world would soon run out of the ability to fertilize crops, and that, as a consequence, millions would die. At that time Britain was importing guano (the droppings of sea birds) from islands off the coast of Peru and from the nitrate fields of Chile, but those sources were finite, and Sir William realized they would at some point run out. (He predicted sometime in 1930 as doomsday.)
To those of us today who can go to our local hardware or garden store and grab all the fertilizer we can afford to pay for, this hand wringing seems a bit melodramatic, but at the time, it was of real concern to many scientists. The world’s population was growing rapidly, and, like today, the vast majority of the world’s population depended upon grains – mainly wheat – for sustenance. Most grains suck nitrogen from the soil to fuel their growth, and once that nitrogen is gone, it takes a long time to get back. And until it does, most any crop grown in nitrogen-depleted soil fails to thrive, and yield per acre falls dramatically.
The fact that nitrogen is lacking in the soil seems strange since we all walk around breathing air that is about 80 percent nitrogen. But the nitrogen in the air can’t get into the soil in a form plants can use unless it is ‘fixed.’ Which I guess isn’t so strange when you consider that we ourselves need nitrogen to grow and repair our tissues, but we can’t get it from the air we breathe either. We have to get it from the protein in our diets.
Nitrogen-fixation process
Bacteria that live symbiotically with the roots of certain clovers and legumes (the so-called green manure) are able to fix nitrogen from the air and covert it to the form plants can use. Over the years farmers had figured this out and planted clovers and legumes in fields for a year or two to replace the nitrogen and make the fields fit to grow cash crops. Or they could use manure or compost – both traditional sources of nitrogen – to replace that needed for growth, but they needed a lot because these were not particularly rich in fixed nitrogen. Consequently, crop rotation and spreading manure/compost wasn’t a particularly efficient way of keeping a profitable farming business growing. A more rich and readily available source of nitrogen was needed.
When enormous deposits of guano - about 10 stories high, extremely rich in nitrogen, and taking literally centuries to accumulate – were discovered off the coast of Peru, a bustling shipping business grew up hauling the stuff from there to Britain. As those supplies started to dwindle, explorers found fields of nitrites in Chile that began to replace the guano. But, as Sir William observed, those sources were finite as well, and would at some point be gone. If nothing was done or no other sources discovered by time the Chilean fields ran out, then the world would be in real trouble.
Sir William pointed out that the populations of all the great wheat-eating peoples, the Brits, the United States and Europe mainly, would outstrip their grain of choice, resulting in the deaths of thousands and perhaps even millions. He announced in the most racist of terms (common at the time) that if a solution of this problem weren’t discovered, and discovered fairly quickly, “the great Caucasian race will cease to be foremost in the world, and will be squeezed out of existence by races to which wheaten bread is not the staff of life.”
“It is through the laboratory,” he pontificated, “that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty.”
I don’t know what the population at large thought about Crookes’ speech, but the scientific community took it seriously. In Germany, a Jewish scientist named Fritz Haber, after years of work, developed a desktop working model of a machine that could convert the nitrogen from the air into ammonia, which is basically the form needed for both fertilizer and gun powder. Other scientists thought Haber’s contraption was interesting but impractical in that the temperatures and pressures required couldn’t be produced with the technology available then in any kind of industrial-sized plant. One non-naysayer was Carl Bosch, an engineer at BASF, the giant German chemical company. Bosch thought he could make Haber’s machine work, and after intense effort he succeeded on a giant scale. Now Haber-Bosch machines use about one percent of the earth’s resources and provide the nitrogen that sustains around 40 percent of the earth’s population. That’s the good news. The bad news is that these machines allow us to live in a carb-dominant world, rich in wheat and corn. Had this technology never have been invented, who knows how the nutritional history of the world would have progressed.
The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager is the fascinating story of the development of the Haber-Bosch system as told 
through the lives of the main players. The secrecy, the infighting, the suicides, the war-time intrigue – all provide high drama in this fascinating story. What I found particularly interesting – not to mention germane for us today – was how Bosch, who could apparently do just about anything chemical engineering-wise, developed a method to make gasoline out of coal. By the end of WWII, 35 percent of Germany’s gasoline and all of its gunpowder came from plants developed and built by Bosch. Why aren’t we looking at this technology that’s already existent to help wean ourselves from foreign oil?
If a technical book is more your style, then grab a copy of Enriching the Earth by Vaclav Smil. You will learn more about the science of ‘fixing’ nitrogen and less about the personal dramas of the main players on the stage. I read both and found them complementary to one another. If you read both, you will know just about everything there is to know about fertilizer and nitrogen. But if you just read one, make it The Alchemy of Air.
Below is a photograph of a Haber-Bosch plant operating in the United States today.
Fertilizer factory using the Haber-Bosch process
Let’s jump subjects and move into the world of fiction. Mystery fiction, to be precise. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, and I catch up on my ever-growing stack of crime novels while on the airplane. I enjoy all kinds of mystery fiction, but lately I’ve had a run of British police procedurals along with an Italian one and a few German ones thrown in the mix.
I just finished Peter Robinson’s All the Colors of Darkness, which I found so so. I thought it a wee bit contrived, much more so than his previous books, which are good books to start with if you’re unfamiliar with the British police hierarchy. The author was born and grew up in the UK, but has lived in Toronto for years. He writes with the knowledge that his readers won’t be up with all the British police jargon, so he goes easy on them.
Despite my ho hum feelings about this book, I did find a paragraph that caught my eye. The paragraph describes a lazy, off-duty Saturday morning routine (which, after this setup, you know ain’t going to last long) followed by Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, the protagonist of the series:
Banks stopped at the newsagent’s and bought The Guardian, which he thought had the best Saturday review section, then headed to the Italian café for his espresso and a chocolate croissant. Not the healthiest of breakfasts, perhaps, but delicious. And it wasn’t as if he had a weight problem. Cholesterol was another matter. His doctor had already put him on a low dose of statin, and he had decided that that took care of the problem and allowed him to eat pretty much what he wanted. After all, he only had to be careful with what he ate if he wasn’t taking the pill, surely?
I suspect the author of this series takes a statin. From his photos he doesn’t appear to be overweight. I would be willing to bet that he, like his character, takes a low-dose statin (what with all the statinators around, who doesn’t these days?) and probably doesn’t watch what he eats because the statin makes him feel safe. Bad mistake, probably, but one I’m sure more than a few who feel themselves invincible on statins make. (Who would’ve thought I could dredge an anti-statin blog out of a mystery novel?)
If you want to get started reading Peter Robinson, find a few of his earlier books. Try Gallows View or Hanging Valley or Past Reason Hated. Any of his books are a good introduction for the US reader into the intricacies of how the UK police works.
I read recently the second novel in Susan Hill’s mystery series, The Pure in Heart, which is a much different kind of book than the Peter Robinson books. Susan Hill is a prolific writer of note who sticks mainly to contemporary fiction with the occasional ghost story thrown in. The detective novel is a departure from her normal course of work, but she adds her own creative touch to the genre. If you decide to read this book, read the one before it, The Various Haunts of Men, first or you will learn something in The Pure in Heart that will give away a big part of the plot in the previous book. As I say, these aren’t your regular mysteries, but that’s what makes them nice.
If you want a mystery that’s a series you can get into and that is quick and fun to read, have a go at any of the novels by Andrea Camilleri about Sicilian police inspector Salvo Montalbano. I’ve read most of these books and just finished the most recent one, August Heat. With this series, you can start anywhere. These novels will certainly show you the difference between the police systems in the UK and in Italy. I don’t know where I would rather be arrested, but I do know that I wouldn’t want to have been arrested in Germany in the 1930s.
If you really want to go back to pre and post WWII Germany, read the wonderful series of books by Philip Kerr about Berlin detective Bernie Gunther. I am currently reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (I always have a long, serious book going that I dip into read a little of daily. Right now I have two: The Rise and Fall and Dawin’s On the Origin of Species.), and Kerr’s novels describe pre WWII Germany to a tee. If you want to see what life was like for Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and others living in Germany as Hitler came to power, you’ll do no better than to read these novels. The first three books in the series, referred to by aficionados as the Berlin Noir trilogy are March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem. You can get all three now in one large paperback, but I would save it for last. As far as I’m concerned, the best way to read these books is from last, to second to last, then the trilogy. In other words, in opposite order in which they were written. Start with the last book, A Quiet Flame, move on to the next-to-last one, The One From the Other, then finish with the trilogy. You won’t be disappointed.
As I’m sure most of you know, I read a lot. I’ll be happy to post from time to time about some of the books I enjoy if most everyone is game. Let me know in the comments if you like these little book reviews. And, please, feel free to recommend any of your own favorite books.
Thanks to ALLIED 2008 151 for the photo of the fertilizer plant
Book Recommendations:
The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.
I did read it. It’s the one by the chess prodigy, right? It was okay, but didn’t live up to my expectations. It was an eye-opener, however, about how the Chinese cheat. A harbinger to what happened in the Olympics.
Suggestion: Next time use ‘constipated’ instead of ‘bloated’… it may not be perceived as harsh… maybe.
Constipated – “stilted or stodgy in appearance, expression, or action”
I can just imagine the response I would have gotten had I written ‘A constipated former politician…’
For more Italy (OK it’s really ancient Rome) have you tried the The Marcus Didius Falco Series by Lindsey Davis?
#1 The Silver Pigs (1989)
#2 Shadows in Bronze (1990)
#3 Venus in Copper (1991)
#4 The Iron Hand of Mars (1992)
#5 Poseidon’s Gold (1993)
#6 Last Act in Palmyra (1994)
#7 Time to Depart (1995)
#8 A Dying Light in Corduba (1996)
#9 Three Hands in the Fountain (1997)
#10 Two For The Lions (1998)
#11 One Virgin Too Many (1999)
#12 Ode to a Banker (2000)
#13 A Body in the Bath House (2001)
#14 The Jupiter Myth (2002)
#15 The Accusers (2003)
#16 Scandal Takes a Holiday (2004)
#17 See Delphi and Die (2005)
#18 Saturnalia (2007)
#19 Alexandria (2009)
I read one or two of these years ago. At the time, they weren’t really my cup of tea. But I should give then another try as an adult.
Dr. Eades-
I just tried to thank you for my birthday greetings but my post was returned. Today, I’m 76, almost zero carb, on my way to my daily workout at the gym, later there’ll be ribs at an overpriced steakhouse with my son. With lots of fat and lots of exercise, old age can be good. Your blog is my daily gift for which I thank you.
A belated Happy Birthday! I hope you have many, many more.
Have you read Australian crime novelist Peter Temple? His book “The broken shore” is one of the best crime novels I have read in ages. Strongly recommended. Terrific characterisation and sense of place, very gripping.
I’ve got the book on order based on your recommendation. It had better be good.
What’s the truth about cholesterol ratios? According to the mainstream, my 234 total cholesterol is high, but my HDL is 63 and my ratios are fine. However, your blogroll buddy at Heart Scan Blog writes this about ratios: http://is.gd/wfLD “By the way, the so-called “ratios” (i.e., total cholesterol to HDL and the like) are absurd notions of risk. Take weak statistical predictors, manipulate them, and try to squeeze better predictive value out of them. This is no better than suggesting that, since you’ve installed new brakes on your car, you no longer are at risk for a car accident. It may reduce risk, but there are too many other variables that have nothing to do with your new brakes. Likewise cholesterol ratios.”
If total cholesterol says little or nothing about cardiac health, and cholesterol ratios say little or nothing about cardiac health, why even bother having cholesterol levels checked in the first place?
Dr Mike, thanks for the book ideas!
I walk about 40 miles a week and use that time to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. I am a huge fan of audiobooks, it’s such a great combination of exercising and entertainment.
One of the most memorable audiobooks I listened to was Shantaram http://www.amazon.com/Shantaram-Novel-Gregory-David-Roberts/dp/0312330529
It’s an autobiographical novel based on a true story of an Australian prisoner who escaped to India. It seems to be unforgettable for me.
I would love it if you started a podcast. An hour a week with some guests and callers would be very cool.
I started reading Shantaram a few months ago and left it on a plane (I think – I really don’t know where it is, so that’s what I assume). I haven’t gotten around to picking up an other copy and getting back into it.
I am in a state of wonderment at not seeing Tony Hillerman’s name mentioned. His mystery novels set in the Navajo “Big Res” with Tribal Policeman Jim Chee and Sargent Joe Leaphorn; they are books I cannot put down once I start. He writes great thrillers set in the Big Res, and he brings in some Navajo folk lore as he goes along. It was sad that Hillerman died a short while ago, not least of all, because he will not write any more books.
BTW, I think you are far too kind and gentle with Al Gore. I will be buying your latest book as soon as it is available. I was sorry to see it bumped from May until September.
BTW2, Anthony Watts has a great web site on Global Climate at http://wattsupwiththat.com/.
He has not drunk the AGW kool-aid, and presents very good, up-to-date information. He is coordinating a review of the temperature recording sites throughout North America, and other places. Many, far too many, of these sites collect garbage rather than data.
I love Tony Hillerman and his books. MD and I got to spend some time with him 15 years or so ago. I didn’t mention him because I was discussing books I had just read, not all the books I had ever read. Hillerman’s books are a great way to learn about Navaho culture. Highly recommended, especially if you’re ever going to be traveling in New Mexico.
My previous comment was an implied “yes” vote, This one is the explicit “yes” vote, just so it gets counted.
Mike, off-topic because it is TV not books, but have you come across the British series called “Spooks” (I think it is shown in the USA but it is called MI5 and I gather broadcast at some obscure time. according to reviews on Amazon, the reviewers also recommend buying it from Amazon UK as it is much cheaper.
It’s one of the best spy shows I have ever seen (well, almost, Tinker Taylor was exceptional)
Glenice
Haven’t seen it, but it sounds good. I did watch a number of episodes of a Brit series called Sandman (I think), which was pretty good. I’ll take a look for Spooks. Sounds right up my alley. Thanks
Of polled climatologists “97.4% believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.” The figure drops down to 80% for all Earth Scientists who took the poll, compared to about half of the American public. None of the above represent a consensus, but apparently the more you know about global warming the more likely you are to believe we’re causing it…
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Surveys_of_scientists_and_scientific_literature)
I fear that such a near-consensus may someday be reached regarding the health impacts of sugar and starch, but then a debate ensues for decades because the affected industries keep cranking out bogus studies and hiring “expert opinion” to cloud public opinion and prevent positive change.
People in general don’t need much encouragement to resist change keep doing what they like doing (burning energy like crazy and eating junk), so stifling progress is much easier than getting it to happen. I hope our kids understand.
By all means, post more book reviews and recommendations. I enjoy them.
“Of polled climatologists “97.4% believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.” The figure drops down to 80% for all Earth Scientists who took the poll, compared to about half of the American public. None of the above represent a consensus, but apparently the more you know about global warming the more likely you are to believe we’re causing it…”
An alternative interpretation: the more your livelihood and research depends on institutional and governmental funding, the more likely you are to support the consensus belief, whether it’s true or not. A decision was made a decade or more ago by global governments and foundations that anthropogenic global warming is the crisis of our lifetimes; any climatologist who bucks that trend tends to be professionally ridiculed or unemployed, or at the very least have his/her projects unfunded. The surprising statistic isn’t that 97.4% of climatologists support the theory; it’s that 2.6% admit that they don’t; I’m guessing those are the ones with tenure and/or near retirement. The same has been true in the nutritional field with the lipid v. carbohydrate/insulin hypothesis; it’s been professional suicide for decades for researchers to come right out and deny the lipid hypothesis, despite the weight of the evidence.
Dr. Mike, please post your book reviews, they’re much appreciated.
What a great post. I’ve been addicted to reading ever since I was 5 years old – a far healthier obsession that being addicted to carbs! And I’ve been a fan of British crime fiction since discovering both Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle when I was eleven years old.
I’ve being reading Peter Robinson for years, though not read the most recent one you talk about. I swear in one of the author’s notes for a previous book he thanked all the medical staff who took care of him after (I believe) a heart attack – so I would not be the least surprised if he is on statins himself.
I have not read any of the other authors you mention, so may have to take a look. I certainly loved the book about Lucy which I read of here. I love reading the other comments too, and seeing references to other favorites like Rex Stout, Tony Hillerman, and Neal Stephanson’s ‘Cryptonomicon’. Overall the British crime novels are my favorites, but I also love the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mysteries by S.J. Rozan, set in NYC. and lately I’ve been on a kick of discovering and reading the Myron Bolitar mysteries by Harlan Coben. I guess I get a kick out of the fact that Myron was raised, and lives in, Livingston, NJ – my daughter-in-law’s home town (and apparently author Coben’s home town as well) , and where she and my son currently live. I get a kick out of all the local references and love to exclaim, “Oh wow! I know that place!” Plus the books are well-written and often very funny.
In the interests of financial necessity, and the fear of my small 1899-vintage house imploding from the weight of all the books and bookcases, I’ve begun using the library more often. It can be hit or miss sometimes, but I’ve enjoyed being exposed to a wider variety of books without any financial commitment. But of course if I totally love a book I end up having to buy it anyway, along with all its brothers and sisters, so I’m not sure how much money (or wall space) I’m actually saving, LOL.
I also enjoy book, movie, tv show reviews so hope you will continue listing yours.
What I don’t enjoy is R or X rated material (not that any of these have that…I’m just sayin). It’s just so disappointing to hear of a popular best seller and then it be filled with continuous “f” bombs. At least if I’m aware beforehand I could select something else.