White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus In Our Cells, In Our Food, In Our World by Jack Lohmann (3/18/25)

A profound and lyrical reflection on the cyclical nature of life, what happens when we break that cycle, and how to repair it-told through the fate of phosphorus: in our bedrock, in our fertilizers, in our food, and in our cells.

"There would be no life without constant death." So begins Jack Lohmann's remarkable debut, White Light, a mesmerizing swirl of ecology, geology, chemistry, history, agricultural science, investigative reporting, and the poetry of the natural world. Wherever life has roamed, its record is left in the sediment; over centuries, that dead matter is compacted into rock; and in that rock is phosphate-one phosphorus atom bonded to four oxygen atoms-life preserved in death, with all its surging force. In 1842, when the naturalist John Stevens Henslow, Darwin's beloved botany professor, discovered the potential of that rock as a fertilizer, little did he know his countrymen would soon be grinding up the bones of dead soldiers and mummified Egyptian cats to exploit their phosphate content. Little did he know he'd spawn a global mining industry that would change our diets, our lifestyle, and the face of the planet.