| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
xiv, 272 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-257) and index. |
| Contents |
An epic quest -- Playing with fire: A thousand years of explosives -- Black powder's soul: The quest fro the elusive saltpeter -- Blasting oil and blasting cap: Alfred Nobel and the terrible power of nitroglycerin -- Construction and destruction: dynamite and the engineering revolution -- The great equalizer: explosives and social change -- Inventions, patents, and lawsuits: The golden age of explosives -- The Guano trade: The toil for Chilean saltpeter and the war of the Pacific -- The profits of dynamite: a gift to science and civilization -- Battle of the Falklands: The struggle for the global nitrate supply -- The father of the war: Fritz Haber's World-changing discovery -- Epilogue: War and the green revolution. |
| Summary |
"Humanity's desire to harness the destructive capacity of fire is a saga that extends back to the dawn of civilization. The true age of explosives, when they radically and irrevocably changed the world, however, began in the 1860s with the remarkable intuition of a sallow Swedish chemist named Alfred Nobel." "As the use of explosives soared and growing populations consumed more food, nations scrambled for the scarce yet vital organic ingredient needed for both. The quest for nitrates takes us from the rural stables and privies of preindustrial Europe to the monopoly trading plantations in India and to the Atacama Desert in South America. Nitrates were as valuable in the nineteenth century as oil is in the twenty-first and were the cause of similar international jockeying and power politics." "A Most Damnable Invention is a human tale of scientific obsession, shadowy immorality, and historical irony, and a testament to the capacity for human ingenuity during times of war. It is also a cautionary reminder of the cyclical nature of history, showing how the solutions of yesterday eventually give rise to the problems of today."--BOOK JACKET. |
| Subject |
Science -- Moral and ethical aspects.
|
|
Science -- Moral and ethical aspects. |
|
Dynamite -- History.
|
|
Dynamite. |
|
History. |
|
Nitrates -- History.
|
|
Nitrates. |
|
Science -- History.
|
|
Science. |
| ISBN |
031232913X |
|
9780312329136 |
|
