Awards
Finalist for Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year
Synopses & Reviews
It has been called “the great destroyer” and “the evil.” The Pentagon refers to it as “the pervasive menace.” 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 year—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 Corporation’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 Department’s rust ambassador, who reveals that the navy’s number one foe isn’t a foreign country but oxidation itself. At Home Depot’s mother ship in Atlanta, he hunts unsuccessfully for rust products with the store’s rust-products buyer—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 best—a fascinating and important subject, delivered with energy and wit.
Review
“Lively....A detailed, fun read with a valuable reminder that every seemingly irrelevant item we take for granted each day is front and center for someone else.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“Waldman is a bright and curious companion in this lively adventure in search of the scourge of rust and its ingenious opponents.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Fascinating...Waldman attends ‘Can School,’ interviews rust experts, and visits the Alaska pipeline, among other adventures, to illuminate the myriad attacks rust makes on our daily lives. In doing so, he adds luster to a substance considered synonymous with dullness.” Scientific American
Review
“Lively...Don’t be put off by the subtitle, The Longest War. Waldman has embarked on the opposite of a slog.” The Atlantic
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“It never sleeps, as Neil Young noted: Rust is too busy wrecking our world. The relentless, destructive process has downed planes, sunk ships, crashed cars, dissolved priceless artifacts, and committed countless other crimes of corrosion. Waldman uses our long war with the iron oxide...[to] offer fascinating insights into our endless battle with the dreaded four-letter word.” Discover
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“Engrossing...Brilliant...Waldman’s gift for narrative nonfiction shines in every chapter....Watching things rust: who would have thought it could be so exciting!” Natural History
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“Compelling...Mr. Waldman does a masterful job of interweaving elements of the science and technology.” Henry Petroski, The Wall Street Journal
Review
“Jonathan Waldman’s first book, Rust, sounds like a building code violation. But don’t let that fool you. This look at corrosion—its causes, its consequences, and especially the people devoted to combating it—is wide-ranging and consistently engrossing. Mr. Waldman makes rust shine.... At one point, a canning executive hostile to Mr. Waldman’s questions tells him rust is ‘a silly subject to write about.’ It is a testament to Mr. Waldman’s skill and perseverance that this book proves that man so thoroughly wrong.” Gregory Cowles, The New York Times
Synopsis
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize ** A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year
Rust has been called "the great destroyer," the "pervasive menace," and "the evil." "This look at corrosion--its causes, its consequences, and especially the people devoted to combating it--is wide-ranging and consistently engrossing" (The New York Times).
It is the hidden enemy, the one that challenges the very basis of civilization. This entropic menace destroys cars, fells bridges, sinks ships, sparks house fires, and nearly brought down the Statue of Liberty's torch. It is rust--and this book, full of wit and insight, disasters and triumphs--is its story.
"Jonathan Waldman's first book is as obsessive as it is informative...he takes us deep into places and situations that are too often ignored or unknown" (The Washington Post). In Rust, Waldman travels from Key West to Prudhoe Bay, meeting people concerned with corrosion. He sneaks into an abandoned steelworks and nearly gets kicked out of Can School. He follows a high-tech robot through an arctic winter, hunting for rust in the Alaska pipeline. In Texas, he finds a corrosion engineer named Rusty, and in Colorado, he learns of the animosity between the galvanizing industry and the paint army. Along the way, Waldman recounts stories of flying pigs, Trekkies, rust boogers, and unlikely superheroes.
The result is a man-versus-nature tale that's as fascinating 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 "engrossing...brilliant...Waldman's gift for narrative nonfiction shines in every chapter....Watching things rust: who would have thought it could be so exciting" (Natural History).
About the Author
A Ted Scripps Fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado, Jonathan Waldman grew up in Washington, DC, studied environmental science and writing at Dartmouth, and earned a master’s degree from Boston University’s Knight Center for Science Journalism in 2003. He has spent the last decade writing creatively about science, culture, and politics for Outside, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, and others. Rust is his first book. He lives in Colorado.