NAMED A TOP-TEN BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

A "fascinating" exploration (Elizabeth Kolbert) of how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying--and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe.
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains--eating, pooping, and dying along the way--are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.

The dynamics that shape our physical world--atmospheric chemistry, geothermal forces, plate tectonics, and erosion through wind and rain--have been explored for decades. But the effects on local ecosystems of less glamorous forces--rotting carcasses and deposited feces--as well as their impact on the global climate cycle, have been largely overlooked. The simple truth is that pooping and peeing are daily rituals for almost all animals, the ellipses of ecology that flow through life. We eat, we poop, and we die.

From the volcanoes of Iceland to the tropical waters of Hawaii, the great plains of the American heartland, and beyond, Eat, Poop, Die, "compulsively readable" (Shelby Van Pelt), takes readers on an exhilarating and enlightening global adventure, revealing the remarkable ways in which the most basic biological activities of animals make and remake the world--and how a deeper understanding of these cycles provides us with opportunities to undo the environmental damage humanity has wrought on the planet we call home.

Author: Joe Roman
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Published: 11/07/2023
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.49h x 6.32w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9780316372923


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2023
Publishers Weekly 09/11/2023
Booklist 10/01/2023 pg. 10
Library Journal 10/13/2023 pg. 1

About the Author
Joe Roman is a conservation biologist, marine ecologist, and editor 'n' chef of eattheinvaders.org. Winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Listed, Roman has written for the New York Times, Science, Slate, and other publications. He is a fellow and writer in residence at the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont.