The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization Audiobook (Free)

A finalist for the Pencil/E. O. Wilson Literary Technology Writing Award

The gripping story of the very most important overlooked commodity in the world–sand–and the key role it plays in our lives.

After water and air, sand is the natural resource that people consume more than any other–even a lot more than oil. Every concrete building and paved street on Earth, every screen and silicon chip, is made from fine sand. From Egypt’s pyramids to the Hubble telescope, in the world’s tallest skyscraper to about The World inside a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Changed Civilization the sidewalk below it, from Chartres’ stained-glass windows to your iPhone, fine sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It’s the ingredient which makes possible our towns, our technology, our lives–and our future.

And, incredibly, 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 essential every day, and of the individuals who mine it, sell it, build with it–and sometimes, even kill for it. It is also a provocative study of the severe individual and environmental costs incurred by our reliance on sand, which has received little open public attention. Not absolutely all sand is established equal: A number of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this globe, taking readers on the journey across the globe, from the United States to remote edges of India, China, and Dubai to describe why sand is so crucial to modern life. On the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building business owners, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an engaging and eye-opening function, one that is certainly both unexpected and involving, rippling with interesting detail and filled with surprising characters.