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The world in a grain : the story of sand and…
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The world in a grain : the story of sand and how it transformed civilization (edició 2018)

de Vince Beiser

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
2058131,211 (3.92)8
Business. Nature. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:A finalist for the PEN/E. O. 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.

After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other??even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from 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 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, 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 people who mine it, sell it, build with it??and sometimes, even kill for it. 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. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. 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. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surpris
… (més)
Membre:jwk
Títol:The world in a grain : the story of sand and how it transformed civilization
Autors:Vince Beiser
Informació:New York : Riverhead Books, 2018.
Col·leccions:La teva biblioteca, @ Guinevere's Cottage Yachats, Outdoors
Valoració:
Etiquetes:natural history, geology, science

Informació de l'obra

The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization de Vince Beiser

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» Mira també 8 mencions

Es mostren 1-5 de 8 (següent | mostra-les totes)
A very interesting and important book, illustrating our growing dependence on limited resources and governments inability to do much about it.
( )
  cspiwak | Mar 6, 2024 |
Если вы считаете, что самой закрытой компанией в мире является, например, зловещая Monsanto, производящая семена с/х растений и пестициды, то вы ошибаетесь. Попробуйте поискать данные о Unimin, одном из мировых монополистов на рынке... кварцевого песка. Сказать, что компания скрывается, это не сказать ничего. Легче узнать секретную формулу Coca-Cola, чем понять структуру и реалии ее бизнеса. Что неудивительно: хотя компания и скрывает почти всю отчетность, известно, что в год в мире производится лишь 30000 т кварца высочайшей степени очистки, т.е. столько же, сколько производится строительного песка в ЧАС в одних только США! Одна его тонна стоит до 10 000 долларов, в то время как тонна обычного песка обойдется лишь в несколько долларов. Отчего так? Просто из этого делаются микрочипы, без которых нынешний кремниевый век, в котором мы живем, был бы не возможен (формула кварца SiO2).

Впрочем, даже с обычным песком, ценность которого исторически считалась минимальной, в современном мире происходят подлинные чудеса по сравнению с которыми события «Дюны» Ф. Герберта просто банальщина. Но, наконец, и этот скромный материал дождался своего автора. Автор не рассматривает культурную жизнь песка в истории человечества (литература и прочие «песочные человечки»), но и без этого ясно, что без него она развивалась бы иначе – уж слишком много значат бетон (дороги и здания) и стекло (бутылки, очки, окна, микроскопы, смартфоны, оптические кабели и повсеместный стеклопластик). История этих изобретений составляет первую часть книги, но именно современные тренды заставляют задуматься, а на те ли мировые новости я подписан.

Начнем с того, что даже обычного пляжного песка сейчас в мире дефицит. Страны побогаче покупают его у тех, что победнее для самых разных целей. Китай намывает искусственные острова, чтобы застолбить территорию в Южно-Китайском море. Сингапур просто растет – с 1965 г. площадь страны увеличилась на 25% и продолжает расти. Крупнейшие мировые аэропорты строятся на искусственных островах – Гонгконг, Катар, Токио и снова Сингапур. Даже Греция купила песок для бич-воллея Олимпиады 2004 на стороне! Все основные пляжные курорты мира ежегодно закупают песок взамен смытого. В американском Верджиния-Бич это проделали уже 50 раз. Наконец, нефть: песок это основной компонент новой технологии добычи, гидроразрыва пластов, позволившей коренным образом изменить ситуацию на мировом рынке энергоресурсов. Тема силиконовых имплантов в книге не раскрывается, и это, возможно, единственый ее минус. ( )
  Den85 | Jan 3, 2024 |
Who would have thought that a book about sand could be so interesting and informative. Vince Beiser brings a journalist's writing skills to this story of this essential commodity. By the end of the book, you will have learned about the wide varieties of sand and why the right kinds of sand are growing more and more scarce. The book provides insight into the specific challenges of sand in places ranging from Broward County Florida to Dubai. ( )
  M_Clark | Jan 21, 2023 |
The World in a Grain: The story of sand and how it transformed civilization

Permanence is a matter of perspective.

As a squishy human that is merely a bag of meat and liquid, I view anything that is harder than my own body as permanent. I subconciously evaluate things around me and identify whether I could be killed or damaged by it landing on me, if it is impossible to move by hand, or is arguably a large dense rocklike element. These perspectives influence the scale and breadth with which I interract with others, my mental stability, and how I move about the world with confidence.

I never gave much thought to the confidence and sense of reliability manifested by the percieved longevity of these objects. By proxy, I never gave much thought to Sand as an element or a composite requirement of construction of the same. It was just sand, something for childrens playgrounds, for cats to pee in, and someplace to visit on the coast that comes home in your shoes. Sand is little and light weight. It is the antithesis of permanence. It is the big sister of dust. And zygote of Mt Everest.

The World in a Grain by Vince Beiser opened my eyes. I always knew sand was a critical ingredient in physical buildings and roadways but never thought about it as a commodity. It serves a purpose in our food production, and communication, even speckling our language with critical phrasing, affirmations, and descriptions.

My personal interpretation of the concept was hugely flawed by my perception that we will never run out of sand. Instead it is finite, with the majority of sand strip mined or pulled from the ocean floor, it serves to be a resource that where several variety are actually killed for.

Sand as a sybiote of practically everything is ‘faux permanent’. It all has a social and physical shelf life of a hundred years or so before the product manufacturing breaks down, wears away, or is smashed by us and replaced with brand new.

Permanence is a false safety net. ( )
  Toast.x2 | Sep 23, 2021 |
Who would have guessed that there was much to write about when the topic is Sand? Well, Vince Beiser took up the task, and that's the subject of his book "The World in a Grain". The most surprising thing I learned upon reading this book is that there soon could be a shortage of sand, and that as it becomes more and more of a precious commodity, gang wars and deaths are occurring because of it.

Beiser explains that the demand for sand, used for concrete and construction projects worldwide, is increasing rapidly. Almost 50,000,000,000 Tons of sand is used for construction projects every day. As sand is mined along coasts and rivers, erosion of shorelines, flooding, pollution, and damage to marine life is occurring. Regulations have been enacted in Countries around the world to control damage and limit these detrimental impacts, but where jobs are scarce and profits can be huge, enforcement of the regulations aren't keeping up. Corrupt businessmen in poor countries such as India, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Kenya, etc., flout the rules and/or pay off officials to continue extracting sand beyond replacement capacity. The demand for sand, and the impact of sand mining, is mindboggling, and Beiser does a good job of taking what sounds like a very dry subject, and showing the importance of controlling illegal mining of this limited commodity.
( )
  rsutto22 | Jul 15, 2021 |
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Business. Nature. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:A finalist for the PEN/E. O. 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.

After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other??even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from 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 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, 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 people who mine it, sell it, build with it??and sometimes, even kill for it. 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. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. 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. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surpris

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