Rust: The Longest War

This book tells a frightening story in a readable style although fewer long lists would have not gone amiss. A central moral of this story is that decision makers mostly don't know what they don't know like all of us. But in the case of rust the cost is staggering.

Lengthy and anecdotal, and I didn't come away with a better understanding of the phenomenon of corrosion. I would gladly have skipped the long saga of the pig in the Alaska pipeline for a more informative treatment of the cover subject Oh, and the word "Rust" doesn't apply to the corrosion in other metals.

In a world where water and oxygen are common, most useful metals have long since been turned into oxides. We have built much of our technology by wresting these metals from the ground and refining them into their pure forms. Nature is relentlessly turning them back to the way they were.

This engaging book chronicles our efforts to delay this process of re-oxydation. It's a battle we may be destined to lose, but we can delay the outcome. 'Rust' is a series of connected essays, some slight (and perhaps not always necessary), and some quite meaty. We begin with a political stunt: protesters scaling the statue of Liberty inadvertently reveal its rapid disintegration. The effort to restore this national icon is our entry into the world of corrosion.

Among the best of these essays we meet a photographer who's built a notable portfolio from the crumbling Bethlehem steel plant. We meet a dedicated bureaucrat who uses a former Star Trek star to fight rust in ships, airplanes and government structures of all sorts. We meet an engineering team pushing a 'pig': a structural probe that passes the entire length of the Alaska pipeline. We learn about galvanization, concrete, paints and coatings of all sorts. And there's not a dull moment. This is interesting stuff, written in an engaging hands-on style with a light touch. Corrosion affects us all. It costs us money and it can endanger our lives. Boring it's not.

The most thought-provoking section is about cans. The food (or other goods) we place in cans is highly corrosive. We've learned to make cans that are lighter, stronger and more resistant to the things eating them away from the inside. But we also learn about the industry's dirty little secret. The thin plastic lining is often treated with Bisphenol A, an estrogen mimic. The reader may remember the BPA kerfuffle of a few years back. Water bottles made with the substance were quickly reformulated and I suspect that most of us felt the problem was over and done. But our soft drinks, our beans, our tomatoes come to us with traces of BPA. The can industry, mimicking the tobacco lobby, insists there's nothing wrong. This isn't a good-guy/bad-guy scenario, and Waldman goes to great lengths to thread the needle. The canning industry has done much good, but has some things to attend to. Perhaps this book will result in greater attention.

We've been brought up to think about new and shiny things. Politicians would rather cut ribbons for new bridges than deal with the old ones that could fall down. It's part of our national makeup, but it may need a rethink. There are dedicated engineers--the dozens profiled here, along with many others--who are fighting a fight we should know about. Many thanks to Jonathan Waldman for shining a light into a fascinating corner.

This is a highly readable account of corrosion (not just "rust" in the common understanding of oxidation of iron). Waldman tells the story of a number of people involved in fighting corrosion, and through the accounts a reader will far better understand how important the problem is, The only reservation I have is that the characters he describes--real people--who are unfailingly interesting, in several chapters overpower the theme of corrosion, and somewhat lose the basic point in the welter of detail. The focus is largely on Americans. The style is what is sometimes called "literary journalism" and is rather like writings by the master, John McPhee.

Waldman tells us early how huge the problem is, estimated at the time of writing as $437 billion per year in the USA alone. He backs the figure up. Several chapters stand out. Chapter 1 discusses the repair of the Statue of Liberty in the 1980s, which in considerable detail describes the causes of corrosion, the bad shape the statue was in, and how it was repaired--and how political the process was. It forms a wonderful case study. Chapter 3 covers the development of stainless steel, although there's what I find to be too much detail about the life of one of the developers.

Chapter 4 really stands out, making the mundane business of aluminum cans fascinating. The focus is on the Ball company and the lining in cans that prevents corrosion. This chapter is also a wonderful case study in the need for and development of a solution. The materials the lining is made of are proprietary trade secrets, but Waldman says there may be BPA in the mix, and he describes how BPA is a serious health risk; this is as close as he gets to being one-sided (I agree with him).

The other chapter that stands out is Chapter 9, focusing on the trans-Alaska pipeline and devices called "pigs" that voyage through the pipeline to remove problems (wax is one, of all things) and map weak spots in the line that must be checked. Told through the career of Bhaskar Neogi, this is the longest and most detailed chapter, and worth reading by itself for anyone interested in pipelines, Alaska or Arctic oil.

There are other interesting people who help tell the story. One is an art photographer, Alyssha Csuk, who photographs rust, as in a rusty steel plant. Another is a fellow who runs the Rust Store in Wisconsin, selling products that help prevent or fight corrosion. Another is a bureaucrat who seems single-handedly to have convinced the pentagon that rust and corrosion can be slowed or partly prevented by due care of machines and installations (the Navy has a huge problem as any and all ships face corrosion of many kinds) and can both help availability of resources and save maintenance money.

There's more, including galvanizing, NACE (the National Association of Corrosion Engineers). They all help to convince a reader that corrosion is a huge and hugely expensive problem, but also that people--mostly male people--who go into the field tend to be individualists.

Jonathan Waldman has written a book which is informative and entertaining. Before reading this book I did not realize how expensive rust produced damage was to our department of defense or in the maintenance of our transportation system. Ships rust; metal bridges rust; pipelines rust and sprig leaks. Without protection all metals corrode, but with proper treatment this corrosion can be delayed and if proper inspection methods are utilized dangers can be averted. Some treatments are much more expensive in the long run than others. Some may be harmful to one's health.

Truly scientific exploration of methods to treat rust are relatively recent and the biographies of some of the major characters in the field make good reading. There is much true adventure to be found here and much to be learned. This is by no means a dull book and it can change the way one views the world.

Highly recommended.

I was expecting kind of a light read that highlighted the history of corrosion. Instead, Jonathan Waldman did what the title suggested, he went to war in this book. After a brief history of rust, he took a deep dive into the battle that humans continue to wage. It was a fascinating story about neglect and consequences of the neglect. I had no idea how serious this issue was and how much effort is undertaken each year. The big takeaway is that is galvanizing should be our best friend. On a side tangent, he discusses the beauty of rust and how our world gracefully decays back into the dirt from which it came. This is a great book and a fascinating read.

Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman

“Rust" is an uneven book about corrosion. Environmental journalist and author Jonathan Waldman takes the reader on an excursion of rust. Through a series of adventures, interviews and just plain curiosity he tells the story of the causes and consequences of rust. This popular science 304-page book includes the following eleven chapters: 1. A High-Maintenance Lady, 2. Spoiled Iron, 3. Knives That Won’t Cut, 4. Coating the Can, 5. Indiana Jane, 6. The Ambassador, 7. Where the Streets Are Paved with Zinc, 8. Ten Thousand Mustachioed Men, 9. Pigging the Pipe, 10. Between Snake Oil and Rolexes, and 11. The Future.

Positives:
1. A well-researched and well-written book. Accessible to the masses.
2. Takes an unusual and often overlooked subject like rust and makes it interesting.
3. Good format. Each chapter covers a story about rust.
4. Waldman has good command of the topic and is detailed to a fault.
5. Does a great job of teasing the book. “Rust, in fact, poses the number one threat to the most powerful navy on earth.” An excellent introductory chapter that whets the appetite.
6. A lot of interesting tidbits. “There’s even rust in outer space, on account of atomic (rather than molecular) oxygen—no small challenge for NASA.”
7. The magnitude of the problem clearly depicted. “But rust is costlier than all other natural disasters combined, amounting to 3 percent of GDP, or $437 billion annually, more than the GDP of Sweden. That averages out to about $1500 per person every year.”
8. A fascinating look at what rust has done to the Statue of Liberty. “Had the statue been built only a decade later, steel, rather than wrought iron, would have been used, and the story would be different.”
9. The science behind rust. “Little known francium, on the lower left corner of the periodic table, is the least electronegative, while fluorine, on the opposite corner, is the most electronegative. The scale runs from 0.7 to 4, in Pauling units. Fluorine, reacting with everything, steals electrons with fury. Oxygen, a gas five hundred times more abundant on earth than fluorine, is the second most electronegative element—and this explains why life relies on it. For transporting energy, it is the best thing going.”
10. The discovery of stainless steel and practical uses.
11. Interesting historical accounts. “In 1916 more than half the steel in the United States was made via electric furnaces; the next year it was 66 percent; by 1930, more than 99.5 percent of the steel in the United States was made in electric furnaces.”
12. A great chapter on Coating the Can. “Rust is a can’s number one enemy. Manufacturing strong, healthy aluminum cans, in fact, is so challenging, and requires such a vast amount of study, design, and precise machining, that many consider cans the most engineered products in the world.” “The corrosivity, in turn, determines the thickness of the coating on the can it’ll be in.”
13. The impact of can linings and taste. “Laperle said that flavor testers at Ball learn to detects parts per million, then parts per billion, and eventually, parts per trillion. He figured that if his flavor testers couldn’t taste something, nobody could.”
14. An interesting chapter on a photographer obsessed with rust. “Depending on their size, Csük’s images sell for $800 to $3,200. She sold somewhere between one hundred and two hundred prints in 2012. She sold one, forty-six inches by ninety-six inches and printed on metal, for $30,000. Most are printed on Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper, with archival pigment prints.”
15. The curious story of LaVar Burton as the voice for rust and Mr. Dunmire the corrosion czar. “Since Dunmire began officially fighting rust, he’s had one agenda for one ultimate purpose: he wants the military to evolve from its current find-and-fix reaction to a form of proactive management, to the benefit of the American warrior.”
16. A look at the galvanizing industry. “Galvanized coatings can handle higher temperatures and last seventy-five years; paint, only fifteen.”
17. Corrosion engineering, it does exist.
18. Everything you wanted to know about “pigging” the oil pipeline. “The pipeline, once the largest privately funded project in America, and one of its greatest engineering achievements, is now an elderly patient in intensive care.”
19. Ways to counter rust. “Home Depot sells three types of rust products: inhibitors, converters, and removers.”
20. The future of rust.

Negatives:
1. The book is uneven. Some chapters are short and sweet while a chapter like Pigging the Pipe overstays its welcome.
2. Some missed opportunities here. I would have included a chapter on the biggest catastrophes caused by rust.
3. Lack of supplementary material. Charts, diagrams would have complemented the narrative.
4. The book drags in places.
5. Could have been more technical without compromising accessibility.
6. No formal bibliography.

In summary, this was a book that started off with so much promise but it overstayed its welcome and missed some golden opportunities. There is still a lot here to like. Waldman does provide some fascinating stories involving rust and succeeds in illustrating the magnitude of the problem. If you have any interest in rust, by all means get the book but most people will have difficulty getting through a chapter like Pigging the Pipe. Average to good.

Further recommendations: “Steel” by Brooke C. Stoddard, “Concrete Planet” by Robert Courtland, “Oxygen” by Nick Lane, “Stuff Matters” by Mark Miodownik, “Everyday Calculus” by Oscar E. Fernandez, “The Disappearing Spoon” by Sam Kean, “Science Matters” by Robert M. Hazen, and “Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field” by Nancy Forbes.

This book details the author's investigative journey of corroding metals as he documents historical and present day problems, solutions and the people who fight the war on this mighty enemy. Along the way, the author gives us a detailed history of metal working from the 1700's to the present day and the experts who have helped transform the world with the first steel mills through today where metal is pervasive and the exporters continual fight to keep the metal improvements from all rusting away.

I enjoyed this book very much. The author has a great way of presenting you the information by pulling you into the story and placing you at that place and time where significant problems were solved, such as keeping Lady Liberty from literally falling apart to protecting thousands of people a year from exploding cans of soda.

It is a great read presented in a manner that anyone can understand and very informative also.

This is a booklet's worth of information turned into a book by filling it with mustache jokes. The info was interesting and I learned a lot. If I had the book in Kindle format I would do a count of "mustache" so those of you considering buying it won't risk underestimating all of us who have complained in the reviews.

I think Waldman is good writer who needs a better editor. One who will say, "Cut out all but one mustache reference, cut out about 100 pages. Reduce the Levar Burton references to a minimum and you'll have a really good book."

Most physicists, I included, will tell you that our most important principle is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law tells us that entropy, the disorder of a system, increases. Rust is a perfect example. The rust process can transform a well-ordered steel beam into a disordered mass of powder that can be dispersed by the wind.

Various chapters deal with the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty inner support structure, the history of stainless steel, the manufacture of beverage cans, the rusting of a former steel factory, and the pigging of pipelines.

The author, Jonathan Waldman, almost gets expelled from Beverage Can School because of his curiosity. We learn along with the author that soda and beer cans are lined with a thin layer of BPA-derived plastic. BPA has been implicated as an endocrine-disrupting chemical. In the end, Waldman is denied a diploma. I will avoid canned beverages.

A chapter of special interest to me was on pipeline pigging. Pipeline pigs are cylindrical objects, which travel through oil and gas pipelines to look for corrosion or to clean the inside of the pipes. The author tells us that "Propelled by gas, a pig can easily rupture a pipeline. ... A forty-two-inch pig came in with such velocity that it knocked a three-thousand-pound door three hundred yards into a car." A gas company wants to put a forty-two-inch gas pipeline pigging station in my town!

The author tells the story in a series of New Yorker-like essays. His style is informal. Rather than a dry recounting of the physical effects of corrosion, the essays are recounted through the eyes of the participants. The entire book is a fascinating read.

As I write this my husband is attacking the rusted nail heads on our home's siding with a Dreml tool. Rust is pervasive and unavoidable. Yet our culture is all about the newest shiniest things with little attention to life-cycle costs.
This book addresses the real costs of rust to our lives. Waldman makes it personal through the choices of topics he covers and allows the reader to serialize his/her read. He begins with metal cans, something each of us probably touches or uses daily.The consequences to our taxes of corrosion, manpower and time invested to prevent, correct, impede rust in our military, in our transportation infrastructure are monumental. The impacts on our energy delivery systems are also profound in terms of direct costs and long-term environmental impacts. These are real issues that few think about or consider in their entirety. How does one go about making people pay attention to something that genuinely affects each and every one of us?
Writing about science for the lay person is always a challenge. What I loved about this book was the quality of the writing. Waldman personalizes the topic by introducing us to a wide range of engaging characters whose passion and/or professions have lead them to dealing with this mostly hidden and ignored subject. Dealing with rust is not a glamorous pursuit yet it is so universal. Learning about the variety of ways rust plays out and who some of range of players are was fascinating.
But what I valued the most about Rust is that it changed my mind about a topic about which I considered myself fairly well versed. Specifically, it was Chapter 9 about the Trans Alaska Pipeline. This portion made me realize that end-game scenarios must be thoroughly considered and budgets allocated before beginning any costly engineering project. Hopefully, the more recent trend of considering life-cycle costs will bear fruit.
I think I've found my next Henry Petroski.

This is an interesting book. It reminds me a bit of a PBS documentary mini-series (one of the good ones, I mean) in the way that it basically ends up telling random historical stories that follow characters through their lives at a certain point when they came to encounter corrosion. You probably could have guessed that there'd be a lot more to this book than just rust and other types of corrosion; you do actually learn a lot about the immediate subject bit by bit throughout the book, but it is by no means a scientific study. Instead, you learn a lot about many different topics, all somewhat cohesive by an underlying subject.

It's an easy and interesting read. No one who likes learning random stuff during their reading hour will regret reading this book.

Jonathan Waldman's book is an excellent introduction to a subject that seems simple on a superficial level, but becomes complex in the details. As an avid reader of technical and scientific literature, I found his writing to be relatively light in tone and entertaining. People with less scientific background and technical interest will perhaps find parts of the book to be too dry for their taste. Still, one person who borrowed the book from me read most of it and liked it, even though she said parts were too technical for her.
Even people who are old enough to remember the restoration of the Statue of Liberty will find interesting details and a fascinating human side to the story. Since my background is in pipeline inspection, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was more familiar to me, yet there were still things I had never learned in this part of the book. It was interesting to me, but my favorite part of the book taught me more about food and beverage containers and their linings than I ever expected to know.
As mentioned previously, Mr. Waldman excels at weaving together the scientific and technical aspects with the story of the people who work with these issues, from the historic background to the current time. I hope to read more of his books in the future!

This is a very good book that details the history of rust and corrosion of steel and iron and the actions by people to create rust-resistant materials and coatings. I am very glad the author, Jonathan Waldman, mentions Benno Strauss, the German Jewish metallurgist (among other fields) who developed and invented stainless steel in Germany.

The book gets into detail about Harry Brearley, the metal man in England, who developed stainless steel, and also covers the work of others who made alloy steel and stain-resistant steel.

I would love to see a second edition of this book in which Mr. Waldman, who is a superb author, would write up and include the new developments in rust/corrosion-resistant and even rust PROOF steel in the form of H1 Stainless Steel and Lc200N stainless steel. LC200N is made by Zapp Metals of Germany and is a nitrogen based stainless Martensitic steel, and H1 is made in Japan by Myodo Metals. H1 is an Austenitic, work-hardening steel. Both of these steel alloys use nitrogen to heavily replace carbon in the iron matrix, and this inhibits the growth of chloride, in salt water, thus stopping rust-formation. Spyderco Knives of Golden, Colorado uses this H1 and lc200n stainless steel in knife blades for their "Salt Series" of knives.

In the future molecular nanotechnology such as that pioneered by Eric Drexler, Ralph Merkle, and Robert Freitas, will be used to make metal-free materials such as atomic-precision diamond-composites and fullerene nanotube composites. Steve Bridgers of Bridgers, LLC, and the INCA Naut Challenge, is also working on such materials such as carbon fullerene-based materials that would never rust and never corrode and would last a billion years without pitting or break-down-failure.

Rating: 3.75

Rust is not something we think about all the time. Actually, most of us don't notice rust until it is taking over some piece of metal. We are all familiar with the color but this goes much deeper than just the surface. Waldman does a great job finding people who have a passion for rust, or the prevention of rust, he travels around with various people seeing what it is really like in their jobs. One over the top character who loves his job as Officer of Corrosion Oversight and Policy Dan Dunmire, to Alyssha Eve Csuk who makes a living photographing rust. Waldman travels to find out how DoD is looking to save the government money on rust prevention, to the American Galvanized Association and their disdain for DoT for letting so many bridges rust rather than using galvanized. The technology in the Pigging operation in the Alaskan oil pipeline blew me away. Waldman opened my eyes to the damage that rust can do and to the fine people looking to save our world from corrosion.

This book was interesting to find, as there have been many times in the last 10 years or so where I have had questions about rust, and they always went unanswered. I was hoping that I would be able to find out a good bit of info on the topic without having to ''deal'' with physics (since physics is always way over my head). This book was great, as it was understandable for me. The BEST part, to me, was all the topics he covered.

I had always wondered just what exactly stainless steel was, but had never really formulated a question about it, but it was always there in the back of my mind, whenever I'd see the term. I LOVED the chapter in this book on the stainless; it was probably my favorite. The story of Harry Brearly was great! He started out with Harry as an 11 year old kid in the 1880s. As a kid he looked in shop windows of the workers making the men make iron, and the blacksmiths working. If he couldn't see inside the windows, he would go in and offer to be a runner and do errands for them, in exchange for them allowing him to watch them work. He was so drawn into the metalwork from the time he was a child! And then the story of him pulling himself up by the bootstraps and learning all the difficult schoolwork in order to become so important in the field he loved, was just fascinating to me. Harry and the stainless steel was just tops to me. I'm going to see if I can find a biography on him to read.

The other stories were interesting, and really good for the most part, though none of the others had the spark that the author gave Harry Brearly to me (I am NOT looking for any other biographies!) But there was a lot of really good information. All the information on the cans and the coatings, with Ball company was really good. There again! Something I never would that thought to investigate. In fact, I would have not even wanted to find out about it. But this author made the subject very interesting.

It's like a really good teacher that tells you about something he's very interested in, and is able to bring the subject to your level, and make you want to learn about it. I'm really glad the author decided to write this book, and include the information he did. I feel that I really learned a lot by reading this, and on several different topics.

Love the remark when the author went to The Can School, when he was told that nobody would ever want to read a book on rust! WRONG I said! I really DO want to read a book on rust, and I am truly glad that Mr Waldman hung in there and finished this book. My thanks to him!

I was astounded to find that corrosion could be an interesting subject. Who knew that:

1) The 1980 climb of the Statue of Liberty by Ed Drummond and Stephen Rutherford to place a banner demanding the release of Geronimo Pratt,, a Black Panther (falsely) convicted of murder, led to the discovery that the statue's frame was rusting away. The climbers were initially thought to be using pitons, but the numerous holes were actually do to corrosion. The contact between the iron frame and the copper cladding had in essence created a battery that was mainly destroying the frame.

2) The Pentagon has a rust czar, Dan Dunmire, who hired LeVar Burton, known to me from Star Track: the Next Generation, to host a series of anti-corrosion videos. Dunmire has also done things that are more likely to pay off, such as inspecting a Navy-owned oil pipeline just in the nick of time to prevent a leak, and now his office reviews construction plans and weapons designs so that corrosion resistance is designed into these things in the first place. The Government Accountability Office has found an average $50 saved for every dollar spent by Dunmire's office.

3) Food and beverage cans have a coating on the inside of them to prevent corrosion; the more corrosive the contents, the thicker the layer. Tomatoes and tomato products seem to be the most corrosive; beer is only slightly corrosive. Unfortunately, the American industry continues to use BPA, a chemical which is an endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic, as the most commonly applied coating.

4) Large corrosion-detecting robots, called pigs, are introduced into oil pipelines, and more recently sewers, to look for corrosion damage. It takes a pig about a month to travel the length of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. These devices may use ultrasound to find corrosion-related damage, or detect magnetic anomalies associated with corrosion, Unfortunately, while the owners of this pipeline are quite diligent, far too many other pipeline owners are not.

5) Rust can be beautifyl, as Alyssha Eve Csuk's photos of the remainder of the closed Bethlehem Steel plant show.

I wanted very much to enjoy this book, but finished it feeling unsatisfied. It is alternately witty, serious, informative, and tedious. Over many pages I wondered when the author would return to the focus, or even acknowledge it. For a book with so much information about issues, organizations, and characters involved in the story how can the book fail to include a bibliography, notes, or an index? The failure to allow a reader easy access to those things - the ability to check the sources for information or readily identify where something appears in the book - is a significant failing. "Integrity management" should have been employed!

I heard Jonathon Waldman interviewed on National Public Radio and read the book three days later. The book delves in detail on several corrosion topics, including the Statue of Liberty, the technology and public health issues associated with food and beverage cans, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and corrosion as an economic player in national and professional policy. Waldman has a quirky, incisive humor, a fearless burrowing tenacity, and a writing style that presents a generous and appropriate level of facts, figures, and technical detail. His ability to describe and develop the personalities central to the main topics is thrifty, insightful, and amusing. People have been poking fun at scientists and engineers for centuries, yet Waldman takes his shots in such a way that the purpose, belief, and drives of the majority of these analytical characters are not disrespected while the value of their mission (economic, public health, art) is pleasantly revealed.

Jonathan Waldman has the gift of making the most banal subjects sound interesting. I mean, really, a book about rust? But it's actually a fascinating subject - we don't often think about it in our daily lives, but after reading this book I am aware that rust is one of our greatest enemies. Each chapter is a different story in that war, from the restoration of the Statue of Liberty to the rust inside oil pipelines.

I really liked this book. Mr. Waldman is a compelling writer, and he really knows how to find the interest in his subject. I gave it four stars because some chapters are a bit technical and a little hard to follow, but it's worth a little bit of work, because this really is interesting.

Rust is the most entertaining nonfiction book I've read this year. The author does a great job of balancing scientific detail with compelling stories. He brings out the characters involved in the battle against corrosion and makes them the center of the story. Each chapter pretty much stands alone and covers one topic or subject. From visiting abandoned steel mills looking for art, to sitting in on a canmaking conference the author uses his personal experience researching the book to make the stories more immediate. The writing is engaging with some odd quirks, like an obsession with moustaches, popping up every once in a while. The topics that I found the most interesting were the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, can school, and the monitoring program for the Alaskan oil pipeline but they pretty much all were entertaining. The science itself is not too difficult and the concepts involved are explained clearly. This is a fantastic science book and well worth reading.

A really wonderful, in-depth look at rust. Corrosion surrounds us and it is inevitable. This book explains why it happens, how it is exacerbated or accelerated, and the ongoing battle to prevent it, clean it, and hold it bay. The author clearly spent a lot of time traveling and talking to experts, from those patrolling the oil pipelines for corrosion, to the incredible history of canning, to the US Government's fight against corrosion (for whom, at least through 2013, LeVar Burton made educational videos), to an artist who takes the most amazing, abstract photos of and finds beauty in rust. It is a fascinating journey learning about something that we can see almost everywhere but which we rarely take any real notice. Recommended.

Not everyone will love Rust: The Longest War, by Jonathan Waldman. Some may think it should be titled, "Rust, The Longest Chapters." I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book because each chapter could stand alone and each taught me something, stirred me to use some of my brain cells. Part historical study, part metallurgical study, part mechanical and chemical study, all together, Waldman suggests that our "mightiest" enemy is rust. I agree that corrosion affects every metal and since our infrastructures are dependent upon metals, the human physical foundations are susceptible to deterioration. What works for me is the obvious passion felt by Waldman because without this passion, I doubt that anyone could have written a lengthy study on the effects of rust and the job at hand for individuals who (mainly mustached men as he claims) strive to either fix or prevent the natural deterioration of metals when exposed to their own kryptonites. I think that despite some of the chapters being less than exciting, this is a good book that is entertaining as well as informational.

This book was interesting to find, as there have been many times in the last 10 years or so where I have had questions about rust, and they always went unanswered. I was hoping that I would be able to find out a good bit of info on the topic without having to ''deal'' with physics (since physics is always way over my head). This book was great, as it was understandable for me. The BEST part, to me, was all the topics he covered.

I had always wondered just what exactly stainless steel was, but had never really formulated a question about it, but it was always there in the back of my mind, whenever I'd see the term. I LOVED the chapter in this book on the stainless; it was probably my favorite. The story of Harry Brearly was great! He started out with Harry as an 11 year old kid in the 1880s. As a kid he looked in shop windows of the workers making the men make iron, and the blacksmiths working. If he couldn't see inside the windows, he would go in and offer to be a runner and do errands for them, in exchange for them allowing him to watch them work. He was so drawn into the metalwork from the time he was a child! And then the story of him pulling himself up by the bootstraps and learning all the difficult schoolwork in order to become so important in the field he loved, was just fascinating to me. Harry and the stainless steel was just tops to me. I'm going to see if I can find a biography on him to read.

The other stories were interesting, and really good for the most part, though none of the others had the spark that the author gave Harry Brearly to me (I am NOT looking for any other biographies!) But there was a lot of really good information. All the information on the cans and the coatings, with Ball company was really good. There again! Something I never would that thought to investigate. In fact, I would have not even wanted to find out about it. But this author made the subject very interesting.

It's like a really good teacher that tells you about something he's very interested in, and is able to bring the subject to your level, and make you want to learn about it. I'm really glad the author decided to write this book, and include the information he did. I feel that I really learned a lot by reading this, and on several different topics.

Love the remark when the author went to The Can School, when he was told that nobody would ever want to read a book on rust! WRONG I said! I really DO want to read a book on rust, and I am truly glad that Mr Waldman hung in there and finished this book. My thanks to him!

I was astounded to find that corrosion could be an interesting subject. Who knew that:

1) The 1980 climb of the Statue of Liberty by Ed Drummond and Stephen Rutherford to place a banner demanding the release of Geronimo Pratt,, a Black Panther (falsely) convicted of murder, led to the discovery that the statue's frame was rusting away. The climbers were initially thought to be using pitons, but the numerous holes were actually do to corrosion. The contact between the iron frame and the copper cladding had in essence created a battery that was mainly destroying the frame.

2) The Pentagon has a rust czar, Dan Dunmire, who hired LeVar Burton, known to me from Star Track: the Next Generation, to host a series of anti-corrosion videos. Dunmire has also done things that are more likely to pay off, such as inspecting a Navy-owned oil pipeline just in the nick of time to prevent a leak, and now his office reviews construction plans and weapons designs so that corrosion resistance is designed into these things in the first place. The Government Accountability Office has found an average $50 saved for every dollar spent by Dunmire's office.

3) Food and beverage cans have a coating on the inside of them to prevent corrosion; the more corrosive the contents, the thicker the layer. Tomatoes and tomato products seem to be the most corrosive; beer is only slightly corrosive. Unfortunately, the American industry continues to use BPA, a chemical which is an endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic, as the most commonly applied coating.

4) Large corrosion-detecting robots, called pigs, are introduced into oil pipelines, and more recently sewers, to look for corrosion damage. It takes a pig about a month to travel the length of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. These devices may use ultrasound to find corrosion-related damage, or detect magnetic anomalies associated with corrosion, Unfortunately, while the owners of this pipeline are quite diligent, far too many other pipeline owners are not.

5) Rust can be beautifyl, as Alyssha Eve Csuk's photos of the remainder of the closed Bethlehem Steel plant show.

I wanted very much to enjoy this book, but finished it feeling unsatisfied. It is alternately witty, serious, informative, and tedious. Over many pages I wondered when the author would return to the focus, or even acknowledge it. For a book with so much information about issues, organizations, and characters involved in the story how can the book fail to include a bibliography, notes, or an index? The failure to allow a reader easy access to those things - the ability to check the sources for information or readily identify where something appears in the book - is a significant failing. "Integrity management" should have been employed!

I heard Jonathon Waldman interviewed on National Public Radio and read the book three days later. The book delves in detail on several corrosion topics, including the Statue of Liberty, the technology and public health issues associated with food and beverage cans, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and corrosion as an economic player in national and professional policy. Waldman has a quirky, incisive humor, a fearless burrowing tenacity, and a writing style that presents a generous and appropriate level of facts, figures, and technical detail. His ability to describe and develop the personalities central to the main topics is thrifty, insightful, and amusing. People have been poking fun at scientists and engineers for centuries, yet Waldman takes his shots in such a way that the purpose, belief, and drives of the majority of these analytical characters are not disrespected while the value of their mission (economic, public health, art) is pleasantly revealed.

Jonathan Waldman has the gift of making the most banal subjects sound interesting. I mean, really, a book about rust? But it's actually a fascinating subject - we don't often think about it in our daily lives, but after reading this book I am aware that rust is one of our greatest enemies. Each chapter is a different story in that war, from the restoration of the Statue of Liberty to the rust inside oil pipelines.

I really liked this book. Mr. Waldman is a compelling writer, and he really knows how to find the interest in his subject. I gave it four stars because some chapters are a bit technical and a little hard to follow, but it's worth a little bit of work, because this really is interesting.

Rust is the most entertaining nonfiction book I've read this year. The author does a great job of balancing scientific detail with compelling stories. He brings out the characters involved in the battle against corrosion and makes them the center of the story. Each chapter pretty much stands alone and covers one topic or subject. From visiting abandoned steel mills looking for art, to sitting in on a canmaking conference the author uses his personal experience researching the book to make the stories more immediate. The writing is engaging with some odd quirks, like an obsession with moustaches, popping up every once in a while. The topics that I found the most interesting were the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, can school, and the monitoring program for the Alaskan oil pipeline but they pretty much all were entertaining. The science itself is not too difficult and the concepts involved are explained clearly. This is a fantastic science book and well worth reading.

A really wonderful, in-depth look at rust. Corrosion surrounds us and it is inevitable. This book explains why it happens, how it is exacerbated or accelerated, and the ongoing battle to prevent it, clean it, and hold it bay. The author clearly spent a lot of time traveling and talking to experts, from those patrolling the oil pipelines for corrosion, to the incredible history of canning, to the US Government's fight against corrosion (for whom, at least through 2013, LeVar Burton made educational videos), to an artist who takes the most amazing, abstract photos of and finds beauty in rust. It is a fascinating journey learning about something that we can see almost everywhere but which we rarely take any real notice. Recommended.

Not everyone will love Rust: The Longest War, by Jonathan Waldman. Some may think it should be titled, "Rust, The Longest Chapters." I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book because each chapter could stand alone and each taught me something, stirred me to use some of my brain cells. Part historical study, part metallurgical study, part mechanical and chemical study, all together, Waldman suggests that our "mightiest" enemy is rust. I agree that corrosion affects every metal and since our infrastructures are dependent upon metals, the human physical foundations are susceptible to deterioration. What works for me is the obvious passion felt by Waldman because without this passion, I doubt that anyone could have written a lengthy study on the effects of rust and the job at hand for individuals who (mainly mustached men as he claims) strive to either fix or prevent the natural deterioration of metals when exposed to their own kryptonites. I think that despite some of the chapters being less than exciting, this is a good book that is entertaining as well as informational.

Ostensibly prompted by the author's purchase of a 40-foot sailboat suffering massive rust problems, Rust delves into "the great destroyer's" causes, results and our ongoing battle to defeat it. And it's quite fascinating.

Even for an information hound like me, it's tough to imagine a topic like rust holding my attention for 250+ pages, yet for the most part, it did.

Waldman has gone deep here; he's not only found tales of corrosion that are interesting, he's told them with skill and wit (despite his obvious personal vendetta against the stuff) that kept me coming back for more. I did find bits a bit drawn out, and suspect that I would have enjoyed the book a bit more had it been edited with a slightly heavier hand and an eye to moving it all along at a snappier pace, but all in all it was a wonderfully researched and fascinating book.

If you've ever wondered about the hows and whats of rust, you simply can't go wrong here. And even if you, like I, just like to "know stuff," Rust is a solid and enjoyable read.

The great scope of human history can be exciting, but a narrow viewpoint can be even more intriguing. In this book, we look at rust: what happens when oxygen interacts with metals and when metals interact with each other. From the Statue of Liberty to Sheffield steel to the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline, this enjoyable book looks not only at the chemistry but also at the people involved in it, both the famous and the lesser-known.

The result is an intimate portrait of something we often overlook. The reader walks away with a greater awareness of how corrosion mocks the biggest and most impressive accomplishments of human beings, as well as a lot of new information and appreciation.

This book was rather disappointing. While the first 3 chapters were relatively entertaining and informative, the character studies in the rest of the book rambled on far too long and didn't contain enough substance. It's quite an oversight to write a book about rust but not spend one little chapter to describe the mechanics and science of how rust forms and the different types. I wanted to learn more, but most of the science was skipped over with vague descriptions. The author also often takes a flippant tone that fails to be charming. He sometimes seems to be mocking the people he profiles, which I found off-putting. I recommend finding a library copy to read the first three chapters but don't bother buying the whole thing. I won't be reading more books by this author.

This is a thorough and often witty history of rust and the battle against it. Waldman suggests that like death and taxes, rust is one of the only sure things in life. He chronicles the continuing battle against rust and corrosion starting with cleansing the Statue of Liberty of corrosion and continuing with development of stainless steel and onwards. He keeps a narrative going which keeps the reader fascinated with occasional tongue in cheek asides. So this will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about rust and corrosion and entertains you while so doing. Highly recommended.

I don’t think I could possibly say enough flattering things about Rust by Jonathan Waldman. I absolutely loved this book, but I was surprised by how much there is to say about a topic like rust. It’s an incredibly compelling story, and I learned a lot not only about the science of rust and it’s history but also about the problems rust poses in the United States today in terms of infrastructure. Having gone to college just steps away from the abandoned Bethlehem Steel mill, I also got a kick out of his adventures exploring the hulking ruins I’m so familiar with. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and completely recommend it for anyone who likes non-fiction and just learning about a new topic.

The book starts very slow, with introduction that reads as a collection of headlines from a paper. This rusts. That rusts. This rusts, too. And did you know this rusts? This continues for many pages with no sense of direction and purpose.
From there there are independent chapters, each telling a different story, some are quite good, some are quite boring. My favorite was Statue of Liberty and how it was being restored.
There is a lot of mustaches in the book, as if they have anything to do with rust. Most of the chapters read as quite inflated newspaper articles. Author mentions some studies several times, but never gives the source. There is a lot of factoids - if you stack so many cans, you can get this high, etc. Author gives an account of his own quite unsavory behavior - weaseling into the "Can School" to learn about cans, entering an old steelworks illegally with a photographer. There is a lot of going off topic and loosing the thread of discussion.
Some of the facts in the book are very interesting, but the whole set up gets to be so boring that I had hard time finishing the book.

This book has entertaining moments. Overall it feels like a bunch of slightly related articles strung together in one book. It lacks focus, oversimplifies the subject, and falls back into a lot of filler or padding material about the people who work in the corrosion engineering field. It gave the impression this is the first time the author had dealt with technical people of any sort. The mildly obsessive compulsive nature of professionals who love to discuss their subject seems to fascinate the author. The author falls back on character sketches and anecdotes, which are mildly interesting in places. There is some science in this book, but the author does not summarize it well.