Includes bibliographical references (pages 238-242).

Where did all the carbon go? -- The marriage of light and dark -- Send in the cows -- Letting nature do its job -- Cashing in on carbon -- Why don't we know this stuff? -- New bedfellows -- Heroes of the underground. Thousands of years of poor farming, ranching, and land practices, especially modern industrial agriculture, have led to the loss of 80 billion tons of carbon from the worlds soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist Kristin Ohlson makes a case for "our great green hope," a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon and potentially reverse global warming.