The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

by Dan Egan

Find this book on WorldCat

W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 2017

AA landmark work of science, history and reporting on the past, present and imperiled future of the Great Lakes.--The Death and Life of the Great LakesFor thousands of years the pristine Great Lakes were separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the roaring Niagara Falls and from the Mississippi River basin by a "sub-continental divide. "Beginning in the late 1800s, these barriers were circumvented to attract oceangoing freighters from the Atlantic and to allow Chicago's sewage to float out to the Mississippi. These were engineering marvels in their time--and the changes in Chicago arrested a deadly cycle of waterborne illnesses--but they have had horrendous unforeseen consequences. Egan provides a chilling account of how sea lamprey, zebra and quagga mussels and other invaders have made their way into the lakes, decimating native species and largely destroying the age-old ecosystem. And because the lakes are no longer isolated, the invaders now threaten water intake pipes, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure across the country.--In an age when dire problems like the Flint water crisis or the California drought bring ever more attention to the indispensability of safe, clean, easily available water, --is a powerful paean to 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 need to do to protect it (via WorldCat)

Dan Egan is the Brico Fund Journalist in Residence at the Center for Water Policy in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Freshwater Sciences whose work appears in media outlets across the country. Egan is an environmental journalist and author of the “Death and Life of the Great Lakes.” Egan was a reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covering the Great Lakes from 2002 until 2021. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and he has won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, John B. Oakes Award, AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, and J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Egan is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Columbia School of Journalism. A native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, he grew to love Lake Michigan by spending summer weekends and vacations on the Door Peninsula, where both sets of his grandparents had summer homes. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in history in 1989, Egan moved out West and worked as an assistant park historian at Yellowstone National Park. In 1992 he began his newspaper career at the Idaho Mountain Express in Sun Valley Idaho. From there he moved on to newspapers in Idaho Falls, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. During his decade out West, Egan covered a range of environmental issues, including efforts to restore threatened and endangered species like wolves, salmon and grizzly bears. He also covered Alpine skiing for the Salt Lake Tribune during the 2002 Winter Games. Egan moved back to Wisconsin in 2002, and lives with his wife and four children in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay. (via daneganauthor.com)

Learn more about Dan Egan and The Death and Life of the Great Lakes at: https://www.daneganauthor.com/about