The Death and Life of the Great Lakes Audiobook (Free)

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

Winner from the J. Anthony Lukas Prize

A landmark work of science, background and reporting on days gone by, present and imperiled upcoming of the fantastic Lakes.

The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and First-class—keep 20 percent of the world’s way to obtain surface fresh water and offer sustenance, work and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading over the continent. The about The Loss of life and Existence of the fantastic Lakes Loss of life and Life of the Great Lakes can be prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable family portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eye, blending the epic tale of the lakes with an study of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and protect them for decades to come.

For thousands of years the pristine Great Lakes were separated from your Atlantic Ocean from the roaring Niagara Falls and from your Mississippi River basin by a “sub-continental divide.” From the later 1800s, these obstacles had been circumvented to attract oceangoing freighters in the Atlantic also to allow Chicago’s sewage to float away to the Mississippi. They were executive marvels in their time—as well as the changes in Chicago imprisoned a deadly routine of waterborne health problems—but they have had horrendous unforeseen outcomes. Egan offers a chilling accounts of how ocean lamprey, zebra and quagga mussels and additional invaders have produced their way in to the lakes, decimating native species and generally destroying the age-old ecosystem. And because the lakes are no more isolated, the invaders right now threaten water intake pipes, hydroelectric dams and additional infrastructure in the united states.

Egan also explores why outbreaks of toxic algae stemming in the overapplication of farm fertilizer have gone massive biological “deceased areas” that threaten the supply of fresh drinking water. He examines fluctuations in the degrees of the lakes caused by manmade climate transformation and overzealous dredging of shipping stations. And he reports on the chronic risks to siphon off Great Lakes drinking water to slake drier regions of America or even to be sold abroad.

In a day and time when dire problems just like the Flint water crisis or the California drought provide ever more attention to the indispensability of safe, clean, easily available water, The Death and the life span of the Great Lakes is a powerful paean from what is arguably our most precious resource, an urgent examination of what threatens it and a convincing call to arms about the relatively simple things we have to do to safeguard it.