"Material World" by Ed Conway (2023)

"In those periods when supply chains work and materials can flow freely from one part of the world to another, it hardly seems to matter where things come from, where they are made or how they are made.  They simply turn up and feed into an industrial machine we have stopped attempting to map or understand.  But on those rare occasions when these supply chains break down, most obviously in the face of war and trade battles, all bets are suddenly off.  The Material World rapidly becomes all-important.  Those cheap, ubiquitous materials we could once source very easily from the other side of the world take on a new, urgent dimension.  And given the degree of complexity in product manufacture is greater today than in any previous generation, the potential impact of countries around the world choosing autarky -- trying to survive without imports -- could be severe."

Ed Conway, to quote the author's introduction at the back of this book, "is an author and broadcaster.  He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and The Sunday Times.  He has written two critically acclaimed and bestselling books."

The Material World is divided into six sections, these being: Sand, Salt, Iron, Copper, Oil and Lithium.  In each of these sections the author discusses how these materials are mined and their various industrial uses, both high tech and low.  He also delves into the history of how these materials first came to be used, and how the acquisition or present use of these materials either contributes to or potentially alleviates climate change.  

And not to bring politics into it too much, but yeah, The Material World is a very Biden-era book.  Some of the author's optimism with regard to alleviating climate change and reaching certain goals hits differently during the Trump administration.  Yes, the author's heart was in the right place, but some of the "solutions" posited near the end of this book seem very impractical now.

That, however, isn't my biggest problem with The Material World.  My biggest problem is that it's rather boring, and often comes across as a list of semi-interesting factoids that one have just as easily found on Wikipedia.  This book needed some kind of argument to bring its various strands together, and lacking that argument it's best considered as a sometimes amusing, sometimes boring detour through the industrial side of modern society.

I enjoyed the last chapter of this book, but otherwise I can't recommend it.  Those already interested in modern materials science would be better served elsewhere, and those new to the topic will find easier approaches in the popular science section of any local bookstore.

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The Best American Science and Nature Writing: 2021," edited by Ed Yong (2022)

"Song took a shallow, labored breath.  He worried that a deepening distrust of doctors was undermining end-of-life discussions: "It's impossible when the patient or the patient's family is thinking at every turn, Oh, is the doctor saying there's nothing we can do because that's really the case or because he doesn't think he'll earn enough to be worth his effort?"  Song adjusted his nasal tube.  "Everyone should know what's coming.  When that day comes, we have to know the difference between giving up and letting go."

2021, as I'm sure everyone still living knows, was a difficult year for most people.  In 2023 many of us are looking at COVID more retrospectively, but back in 2021 COVID was an omnipresent fact of life, informing both trends in journalism and the shape our daily lives took.  2021 wasn't a good year for anyone who read the news, enjoyed traveling, or who worried aver the prospect of continued, unhindered breathing.

So of course COVID is a major theme in this book.  It isn't the subject of every article, but it's almost always there, lurking in the background, if not placed front and center.  And in the pages where COVID is absent there's climate change, a subject which is often assessed and reassessed in connection with COVID, so it should come as no surprise that The Best American Science and Nature Writing: 2021 more often than not makes for depressing reading.

This book is divided into three sections: "Contagion," "Connections" and "Consequences."  I'm sure you can guess what the articles in "Contagion" are about.  "Connections" and "Consequences" are where the articles offered and the subjects they highlight are more diverse, and where COVID forms more of a backdrop to a wider variety of topics.

The first section, "Contagion," was the hardest for me to get through.  Part of my difficulty was the fact that I, like many of you, have been emotionally exhausted by discussions of emergency rooms, dwindling resources and the ways in which viruses are transmitted.  Part of my difficulty also lies with the fact that a couple of articles in this section are just badly written, poorly conceived exercises in journalism, "It's Not Too Late To Save Black Lives" and "The Soft Butch That Couldn't" being the word offenders in this regard.  But then again we were all quietly (or not so quietly) panicking in 2021, so I can't blame the editor too much for the inclusion of these pieces.

The second and third sections of this book are better, even if Emily Raboteau's "This Is How We Live Now" is one of the most hysterical, overwrought, misleading bits of "journalism" I've ever come across.  It's less an essay than a guide to the author's pretentious friends.  COVID?  Climate change?  I'd take both over the annoying urban types that populate this tired plea for relevance.  Talk about preaching to a very particular choir.

I can't say that I found much common ground with the climate change articles in this book.  They discuss ecosystems, sure, but I wasn't seeing much understanding of how ecosystems actually work.  What's that, you say, we can't just pick and choose the aspects of nature we like, managing them in perpetuity?  No we can't, and a more humble understanding of our place in nature might be in order.  At the end of each day it's not about the end of the world; it's not about saving the planet, it's about saving ourselves, and living in a way that puts less pressure on the environments we inhabit.

The last two articles in this collection, "The Friendship and Love Hospital" and "The Last Children of Down Syndrome," are far and away the best articles in this book.  The former discusses hospice care in China, and it's one of the most masterfully written articles I've come across in a long time.  The latter article explores the effect of prenatal DNA testing on expectant mothers, and reveals a complex web of choices with regard to who is born, who isn't, and how our understanding of genetics plays into public policy.

Overall I think that this collection is worth reading, but you could probably skip over the first section.  Those articles were written in the thick of things, and we've all been there and had those arguments with friends and family already.

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