What is it like to speed into the dark on a driverless train, 200 fathoms below the sea, to mine coal? To travel over the windswept North Sea by helicopter to an oil exploration platform out on the desolate ocean? Surprising descriptions of the current processes of ocean mining, and much lore about mining since ancient times, add to Elisabeth Mann Borgese's new book on the importance and inevitability of mining the ocean's mineral treasures. Author of Seafarm and Drama of the Oceans, among other important books, Borgese now emphasizes that the ocean holds great stores of the metals and minerals that are the basis of modern life: silicon, the material for "chips" that sustain the Computer Age; fundamental iron; billions of dollars' worth of nickel, copper, cobalt, magnesium, and more. Mining these has already proved feasible, if difficult and dangerous, reports Borgese; she explores new developments and details their hazards and consequences for economics, politics, society, and the environment. With a foreword by internationally noted economist and Nobel laureate Jan Tinbergen, the book poses a careful and convincing scenario of a future that depends on international cooperation. Borgese unfailingly makes technical jargon comprehensible, and offers copious illustrations, including 30 photographs in full color, to help readers picture the complex work already underway. Elisabeth Mann Borgese, youngest daughter of the famed novelist Thomas Mann, is professor of political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and chairman of the planning council of the International Ocean Institute. She is a member of the Austrian delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and the Jamaica Commission. She was instrumental in the establishment of the International Ocean Institute in Malta and has directed a number of its research projects.