Rust: The Longest War

Rust: The Longest War

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize ** A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year

It has been called â€œthe great destroyerâ€ and â€œthe evil.â€ The Pentagon refers to it as â€œthe pervasive menace.â€ It destroys cars, fells bridges, sinks ships, sparks house fires, and nearly brought down the Statue of Liberty. Rust costs America more than $400 billion per yearâ€”more than all other natural disasters combined.

In a thrilling drama of man versus nature, journalist Jonathan Waldman travels from Key West, Florida, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to meet the colorful and often reclusive people who are fighting our mightiest and unlikeliest enemy. He sneaks into an abandoned steelworks with a brave artist, and then he nearly gets kicked out of Ball Corporationâ€™s Can School. Across the Arctic, he follows a massive high-tech robot that hunts for rust in the Alaska pipeline. On a Florida film set he meets the Defense Departmentâ€™s rust ambassador, who reveals that the navyâ€™s number one foe isnâ€™t a foreign country but oxidation itself. At Home Depotâ€™s mother ship in Atlanta, he hunts unsuccessfully for rust products with the storeâ€™s rust-products buyerâ€”and then tracks down some snake-oil salesmen whose potions are not for sale at the Rust Store. Along the way, Waldman encounters flying pigs, Trekkies, decapitations, exploding Coke cans, rust boogers, and nerdy superheroes.

The result is a fresh and often funny account of an overlooked engineering endeavor that is as compelling as it is grand, illuminating a hidden phenomenon that shapes the modern world. Rust affects everything from the design of our currency to the composition of our tap water, and it will determine the legacy we leave on this planet. This exploration of corrosion, and the incredible lengths we go to fight it, is narrative nonfiction at its very bestâ€”a fascinating and important subject, delivered with energy and wit.
Country USA
Brand Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer Simon & Schuster
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2015-03-10
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781451691597

Country	USA
Brand	Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2015-03-10
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781451691597

Rust: The Longest War

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