The Electric: Let’s Debate Before We Dig Up the Earth, Book Argues

In the 1870s, according to legend, a group of Apache warriors jumped to their deaths from a 4,700-foot cliff in Arizona rather than surrender to U.S. Army soldiers who were closing in on them. Today, descendants of the warriors return to the site—dotted with rock carvings and known as Apache Leap—for sacred rites. But in the early 2000s, Ernest Scheyder writes in his timely new book, “The War Below,” mining giant Rio Tinto said it had discovered one of the world’s largest deposits of copper beneath the land the Apaches claim as theirs. The copper reserves, Rio said, were sufficient to satisfy a quarter of annual U.S. demand for decades, including the voracious needs of the country’s nascent electric vehicle and battery industries.