MATERIAL WORLD

THE TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award Picked as a Book of the Year by FINANCIAL TIMES ECONOMIST and NEW STATESMANA BBC RADIO 4 Book of the Week A compelling narrative of the human story TIM MARSHALL author of Prisoners of Geography Lively rich and exciting full of surprises PETER FRANKOPAN author of The Silk Roads Sand salt iron copper oil and lithium They built our world and they will transform our future These are the six most crucial substances in human history They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day They power our computers and phones build our homes and offices and create life saving medicines But most of us take them completely for granted In Material World Ed Conway travels the globe from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates to uncover a secret world we rarely see Revealing the true marvel of these substances he follows the mind boggling journeys miraculous processes and little known companies that turn the raw materials we all need into products of astonishing complexity As we wrestle with climate change energy crises and the threa