Nonfiction
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©2025
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270 pages ; 18 cm
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Part I. A shrug, and a smile, and back to normal -- Part II. The water wasn't even like water anymore -- A town too tough for toxic water -- The most intensely cultivated region in the state -- Have you thanked a cyanobacteria today? -- Orville Redenbacher, we have a problem -- The Caribbean Sea of the Midwest -- Part III. Vernal pools -- The dark half -- Here is the place God forgot -- The worst road in America -- A funeral every day -- Too many frogs, too many mudholes -- The Buckeye traction digger -- Come as you are -- An all-out war on the trees -- Corn city -- Crop economics for Ohio -- The beginning of the beginning -- Bring us together again -- America's dead sea -- She could kick a bear to death with her bear feet -- Fire and water -- Part IV. You never forget your first toxic algae -- Lake Erie is not a toilet -- The corniest music we've ever played -- The cat is out of the bag -- We're all kings here -- Beginning again -- Part V. Elon Musk's chainsaw -- The bowl -- Acknowledgments -- Bibilography -- About the author
"In the summer of 2014, a strange thing happened to one of the largest freshwater bodies on the planet: Lake Erie's western shore turned bright green with toxic algae that could have killed 400,000 Ohioans. Stranger still, it was kind of Patrick Wensink's fault. Okay, partially his fault, but also to blame was industrial corn farming, greenhouse gasses, the Worst Road In America, his attraction to toxic relationships, Richard Nixon, Charles Dickens, cyanobacteria, high school bullies, and, most importantly, the untold history of the Great Black Swamp: a large swatch of what is now Ohio and Indiana that was once a dangerous, malaria-ridden wetland. Toxic green algae has become a global problem. While the scientific community scrambles to find a solution, Wensink discovers that the answer might be hiding in his former home, a million acres of table-flat farmland so desolate that even other Ohioans look down upon it. Great Black Swamp: Toxic Algae, Toxic Relationships, and the Most Interesting Place in America that Nobody's Ever Heard Of mixes ecological reporting, Midwestern history, and memoir. As Wensink travels through Northwest Ohio, he tells us about his childhood there, his failing marriage, American history, Lake Erie, and the hopeful ecological interventions scientists are performing in the former Great Black Swamp."--Publisher