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THE WORLD IN A GRAIN

Vince Beiser

The Story of Sand And How It Transformed Civilization

The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world and the crucial role it plays in our lives.
Except for water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other - even more than oil and natural gas. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, exists because of sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to Chihuly sculptures to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives - and our future.

And we're running out of it.

The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more important every day, and some of the people who use it, sell it, recycle it, and destroy it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs surrounding sand and the profound global significance, which has received little public attention.


Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, explaining why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter sand pirates, become aware of child sand miners, and learn that not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, full of fascinating detail and populated by surprising people.


Vince Beiser is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Wired, Harper's, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, he lives in Los Angeles.
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Book

Published 2018-08-07 by Riverhead

Book

Published 2018-08-07 by Riverhead

Comments

I thought I knew the basics of sustainability, but this lucid, eye-opening book made me feel like a dolt in the best possible aha-moment way: I'd simply never registered how much of the contemporary worldour concrete and glass buildings and asphalt roads and silicone-based digital devices and so much moreis entirely, voraciously sand-dependent. And the looming global sand crisis: who knew?

feature interview: The world is running out of sand and there's a black market for it now Read more...

The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization is an indispensable book to add to your collection, especially if you thought that climate change was the only issue you have to worry about. Read more...

A fresh history of 'the most important solid substance on Earth, the literal foundation of modern civilization.' Books on a single, familiar topic (salt, cod, etc.) have an eager audience, and readers will find this an entirely satisfying addition to the genre. Read more...

Tech Insider video approaching a million views Read more...

Arabic: Arab Scientific Publishers ; Japanese: Soshisha Publishing ; Korean: Kachi Publishing

Author's article: Concrete is the stuff civilization is made of. But for all its blessings, there are huge environmental costs Read more...

Vince Beiser's NYT opinion piece on sand as a weapon of geopolitics Read more...

author's article: Dramatic Photos Show How Sand Mining Threatens a Way of Life in Southeast Asia: Vietnam is a prime example of a little-known global threat: the mining of river sand to build the world's booming cities. Read more...

Sand shortage? Black market in sand? Secret sand heists? Who knew? I certainly didn't before reading this lively and eye-opening book about a material I'd always assumed almost infinite. Vince Beiser shows, with great skill, that this key component of our fragile, over-consuming planet we need to better understand, conserve and protect.

The book is at its urgent best in chapters on the black market in sand and the sand mafias .with insights on every page, this is an eye-opening look at a resource too often taken for granted. Read more...

A rich study of one of the world's most abundant natural resources: sand.The World in a Grain highlights the ways this ubiquitous global commodity has been essential to human development and advancement.

Vince Beiser article on The Battle for Our Beaches: Development and industrial demand are stripping shorelines of their sand around the world. Can we keep replenishing our beaches indefinitely? Read more...

A riveting, wonderfully written investigation into the many kinds of castles the world has built out of sand. You'll find something new, and something fascinating, on every page. Perhaps even in every paragraph.

Fascinating..A vital addition to every library collection's coverage of resource exploitation and environmental issues.

Beiser presents a fascinating take on the importance of sand . Beiser is a diligent researcher, and his sources and interviews build a strong case in this entirely absorbing if troubling read.

he World in a Grain is nothing less than one of the best reporters working today unpacking the literal foundations of civilization. Everything we are, everywhere we live, is built on or out of sand, and Vince Beiser tells the best story of where that sand comes from, who moves it, and what they build from it. It's a whole new way of seeing the world.

Modern life, as Vince Beiser compellingly explains, is literally made of sand. Yet we have been so profligate with this seemingly inexhaustible resource that for many uses in many parts of the world we are running out. The World in a Grainis a chronicle of innovation and greed and heedless wastein brief, the story of civilization.