Rust: The Longest War

Jonathan Waldman

Mar 2015 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

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).

Ratings and reviews

Interesting, well researched, and subtly amusing; a solid freshman effort from the author. Some interesting subtopics to be sure. Far reaching, but somehow still myopic. Lacked discernable structure beyond being vaguely about the existance of corrosion and a few responses to it. Maybe a more successful second edition would be an ebook-only rerelease of a heavily edited version in the style of Polan's Botany of Desire; have a thesis, then use cases to support it. Overall, this book held my attention, but just barely.

The book veers of too much into following people around who are involved in some way with corrosion, but too often loses the plot. Too much time for instance was spent on the amount of filming LeVar, or on the details of pigging the pipeline (which was interesting but not really focused on corrosion as an issue)

Well researched. Fascinating subject matter. Great insights into infrastructure. Author bounces around a bit while trying to be funny, gets pretty distracting.

About the author

Jonathan Waldman studied writing at Dartmouth and Boston University’s Knight Center for Science Journalism, and worked in print, radio, and TV before landing in books. His first book, Rust: The Longest War, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Colorado Book Award. His writing has otherwise appeared in The New York Times and McSweeney’s. Visit him at JonnyWaldman.com or email him at [e-mail].