A finalist for the PEN/E.
The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters..
Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates.
Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life.
Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful.
It\'s also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention.
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 people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it.
And, incredibly, we\'re running out of it.
It\'s the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future.
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 your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us.
Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand.
After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil.
Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives.
O.
A finalist for the PEN/E
