FINANCIAL TIMES and NEW STATESMAN Best Book of 2023

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, lithium: the six most important materials in human history. They built our world and will transform our future. In this book, Ed Conway travels the globe – from the suffocating depths of Europe’s deepest mine, to the pristine silicon chip factories of Taiwan, and from there to the otherworldly green lakes where lithium is sourced – to reveal a secret world that we rarely see.

Revealing the true wonder of these materials, he follows the intricate pathways, miraculous processes, and unknown companies that transform the raw materials we need into products of astonishing complexity. We often hear that we live in an intangible world of information, but in reality, in 2017 we extracted more material from the earth than in all of human history up to 1950.

Even worse: to make a gold bar, we now have to dig up 5,000 tons of earth. For every ton of fossil fuel extracted, we extract six tons of other materials – from sand and stone to wood and metal. At the same time that we are cutting back on fossil fuel consumption, we have multiplied the consumption of all other materials. Why? Because these materials build everything. These materials power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, create life-saving medicines, and print our books and packaging.

The modern world would not exist without them, and the hidden battle for control of them will shape our future. As we face climate change, energy crises, and the threat of a new global conflict, Conway shows why these materials matter more than ever, and how the secret battle for their control will shape our geopolitical future. This is the story of human civilization, our aspirations and our glory, our innovations and our appetites, from a new perspective.