Catherine Collins

Douglas Frantz

A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and a former private investigator dive deep into the murky waters of the international salmon farming industry, exposing the unappetizing truth about a fish that is not as good for you as you have been told. A decade ago, farmed Atlantic salmon replaced tuna as the most popular fish on America’s dinner tables. We are told salmon is healthy and environmentally friendly. The reality is different. Almost all salmon sold in markets and restaurants are raised in floating feedlots that pollute our oceans and risk our health. In Salmon Wars: The Dark Underbelly of America's Favorite Fish, investigative journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins document how a handful of multinationals transformed salmon farming into our generation’s version of Big Tobacco by concealing health risks and attacking critics. The authors go beneath the water’s surface where millions of salmon are crammed into parasite-plagued cages and fed a chemical-laced diet. The authors document the spread of diseases that threatens the declining population of wild salmon. They take readers inside hatcheries, where young salmon are treated like garbage, and to the farms that threaten our fragile coasts. They draw vivid portraits of characters like the big salmon farmer who poisoned his own backyard, the fly-fishing activist who risked everything to ban salmon farms in the Puget Sound, and the American researcher driven out of Norway for raising alarms about dangerous contaminants in salmon. Finally, the authors chart the future of a salmon farming industry that does not harm the environment or ourselves. What’s at stake, Frantz and Collins explain, is our health, the health of our children, and the health of our planet. Just as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation caused people to reexamine their relationship with the Big Mac, the vivid stories, scientific research, and high-stakes finance at the heart of Salmon Wars will inspire readers to make choices that protect our health and our planet.

The Dark Underbelly of America's Favorite Fish

Salmon Wars

On the morning of February 24, 1942, on the Black Sea near Istanbul, an explosion ripped through a ship filled with Jewish refugees. One man clung fiercely to a piece of deck, fighting to survive. Nearly eight hundred others -- among them, more than one hundred children -- perished. From this dramatic prologue Death on the Black Sea unfolds as a powerful story of endurance and the struggle for survival aboard a decrepit former cattle barge called Struma. The only path to escape led through Istanbul, where the desperate passengers found themselves trapped in a closing vise between the Nazis and countries that refused them sanctuary. The story of the Struma, its passengers, and the events that led to its destruction is investigated and revealed fully in two vivid, parallel accounts set six decades apart. One chronicles the diplomatic maneuvers and callousness of Great Britain, Romania, Turkey, and the rest of the international community, which resulted in the largest maritime loss of civilian life during World War II. The other part of the story recounts a recent attempt by a team of divers to locate the Struma at the bottom of the Black Sea, an effort initiated and pursued by the grandson of two of the victims. A vivid reconstruction of a grim exodus aboard a doomed ship, Death on the Black Sea illuminates a forgotten episode of World War II and pays tribute to the heroes, past and present, who keep its memory alive.

The Untold Story of the 'Struma' and World War II's Holocaust at Sea

Death on the Black Sea

The world has entered a second nuclear age. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation is on the rise. Should such an assault occur, there is a strong likelihood that the trail of devastation will lead back to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father of the Islamic bomb and the mastermind behind a vast clandestine enterprise that has sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Khan's loose-knit organization was and still may be a nuclear Wal-Mart, selling weapons blueprints, parts, and the expertise to assemble the works into a do-it-yourself bomb kit. Amazingly, American authorities could have halted his operation, but they chose instead to watch and wait. Khan proved that the international safeguards the world relied on no longer worked. Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins tell this alarming tale of international intrigue through the eyes of the European and American officials who suspected Khan, tracked him, and ultimately shut him down, but only after the nuclear genie was long out of the bottle.

The True Story of the World's Most Dangerous Nuclear Smuggler

The Man from Pakistan

A prize-winning reporter, his wife, and their two kids describe life in Disney's vision of the future. In 1997, six months after the first residents had moved into Celebration, Florida-Disney's town of the future with its distinctly retro link to a longed-for past-Doug and Cathy and their two kids closed on their new home and settled down to participate in (and observe) this new venture. Their report from the trenches will surprise both Disney haters and Disney fans. What is it like to start a new community-not a suburb or subdivision, but a town, inted to be a self-supporting community with the best of the new technologies (including the very latest in teaching techniques) and the most cherished elements in American towns that existed before the automobile turned everything into a mall? For almost two years the family lived this experiment firsthand. Their report is vivid, funny, and painful-and it tells us as much about ourselves and our hopes and dreams as it does about the daily reality of building a community from the ground up.

Living in Disney's Brave New Town

Celebration, U.S.A.

The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets...And How We Could Have Stopped Him

The Nuclear Jihadist

A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and a former private investigator dive deep into the murky waters of the international salmon farming industry, exposing the unappetizing truth about a fish that is not as good for you as you have been told. A decade ago, farmed Atlantic salmon replaced tuna as the most popular fish on North America’s dinner tables. We are told salmon is healthy and environmentally friendly. The reality is disturbingly different. In Salmon Wars, investigative journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins bring readers to massive ocean feedlots where millions of salmon are crammed into parasite-plagued cages and fed a chemical-laced diet. The authors reveal the conditions inside hatcheries, where young salmon are treated like garbage, and at the farms that threaten our fragile coasts. They draw colorful portraits of characters, such as the big salmon farmer who poisoned his own backyard, the fly-fishing activist who risked everything to ban salmon farms in Puget Sound, and the American researcher driven out of Norway for raising the alarm about dangerous contaminants in the fish. Frantz and Collins document how the industrialization of Atlantic salmon threatens this keystone species, endangers our health and environment, and lines the pockets of our generation's version of Big Tobacco. And they show how it doesn't need to be this way. Just as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation forced a reckoning with the Big Mac, the vivid stories, scientific research, and high-stakes finance at the heart of Salmon Wars will inspire readers to make choices that protect our health and our planet.

The Dark Underbelly of Our Favorite Fish

More than a high-stakes espionage thriller, Fallout painstakingly examines the huge costs of the CIA’s errors and the lost opportunities to halt the spread of nuclear weapons technology long before it was made available to some of the most dangerous and reckless adversaries of the United States and its allies. For more than a quarter of a century, while the Central Intelligence Agency turned a dismissive eye, a globe-straddling network run by Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan sold the equipment and expertise to make nuclear weapons to a rogues’ gallery of nations. Among its known customers were Iran, Libya, and North Korea. When the United States finally took action to stop the network in late 2003, President George W. Bush declared the end of the global enterprise to be a major intelligence victory that had made the world safer. But, as investigative journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz document masterfully, the claim that Khan’s operation had been dismantled was a classic case of too little, too late. Khan’s ring had, by then, sold Iran the technology to bring Tehran to the brink of building a nuclear weapon. It had also set loose on the world the most dangerous nuclear secrets imaginable—sophisticated weapons designs, blueprints for uranium enrichment plants, plans for warheads—all for sale to the highest bidder. Relying on explosive new information gathered in exclusive interviews with key participants and previously undisclosed, highly confidential documents, the authors expose the truth behind the elaborate efforts by the CIA to conceal the full extent of the damage done by Khan’s network and to cover up how the profound failure to stop the atomic bazaar much earlier jeopardizes our national security today.

Catherine Collins

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