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Material World

A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

Ed Conway author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Ebury Publishing

Published:1st Aug '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Material World cover

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
*An Economist, Financial Times, Times and New Statesman Book of the Year*

Shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award and the British Academy Book Prize, Longlisted for the Wainwright Conservation Writing Prize

'Compelling'
TIM MARSHALL
'Lively, rich and exciting' PETER FRANKOPAN
'Vitally important' TIM HARFORD

--_

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future.

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 these six crucial materials completely for granted.

In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe to uncover a secret world we rarely see. As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future.

An eye-opening celebration of human ingenuity -- Andrew Hill * Financial Times, Best Books of 2023 - Business *
Lively, rich and exciting ... full of surprises. Underlines that to understand global geopolitics, you need to understand natural resources and geology -- Peter Frankopan, author of THE SILK ROADS
Fascinating . . . A revelation * The Times, Best Science and Environment Books of 2023 *
A compelling narrative of the human story -- Tim Marshall, author of PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY
Brilliant -- Martin Wolf * Financial Times - Best Summer Books of 2023: Economics *
Fascinating, fun, and vitally important. A wonderful exploration of the world we've built yet somehow manage to ignore -- Tim Harford, bestselling author of HOW TO MAKE THE WORLD ADD UP
Revealing and empowering * New Statesman, Best Summer Books of 2023 *
Expansive, erudite, and edifying. A stunning insight into the materials that shaped our history and built the modern world -- Prof. Lewis Dartnell, author of 'BEING HUMAN: How our Biology shaped World History'
[An] enlightening account... he throws new light on how the world works... Not a sentence jars in Material World * The Times *
A vivid guide to the “material world” on which we all, often unconsciously, rely – and essential background reading to understand securonomics -- Rachel Reeves * New Statesman, Books of the Year 2023 *

ISBN: 9780753559178

Dimensions: 198mm x 128mm x 32mm

Weight: 345g

512 pages