Slime, Ruth Kassinger
Slime, Ruth Kassinger
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Slime
How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us

Author: Ruth Kassinger

Narrator: Xe Sands

Unabridged: 9 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/11/2019


Synopsis

Say “algae” and most people think of pond scum. What they don’t know is that without algae, none of us would exist.

There are as many algae on Earth as stars in the universe, and they have been essential to life on our planet for eons. Algae created the Earth we know today, with its oxygen-rich atmosphere, abundant oceans, and coral reefs. Crude oil is made of dead algae, and algae are the ancestors of all plants. Today, seaweed production is a multi-billion dollar industry, with algae hard at work to make your sushi, chocolate milk, beer, paint, toothpaste, shampoo, and so much more.

In Slime we’ll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market.

With a multitude of lively, surprising science and history, Ruth Kassinger takes listeners on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.

About Ruth Kassinger

Ruth Kassinger is the author of Paradise Under Glass and A Garden of Marvels, as well as a number of award-winning science and history books for young adults. She has written for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Health magazine, National Geographic Explorer, and other publications. She is a frequent speaker at conservatories, arboretums, and garden clubs, and has been featured on radio shows and Voice of America.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Clif

Eons ago algae made life on earth possible by emitting oxygen into the atmosphere, algae continue to support life today by working as a natural buffer to the climatic effects of carbon dioxide emissions, and algae may be our best tool available for the fight against climate change and as a means to......more

Goodreads review by Brian

There is much fascinating material in this chunky book by Ruth Kassinger. It may be my total ignorance of biology and everyone else knows these things, but I learnt so much - for example that seaweed is algae and not a plant, about algae's role in the development of land plants, about the algae in l......more