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In Power Metal, journalist and author Vince Beiser explores the Achilles’ heel of green power and digital technology: that the manufacturing of our computers, cell phones, electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines requires enormous amounts of increasingly rare materials—lithium, cobalt, copper, and others—the demand for which is skyrocketing. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet.

Ever since the Greek and Roman historians speculated on the seemingly ever-growing violence and greed of the world, metal has been to blame. We have gone from a “golden age” of peace and shared plenty, to an “iron age of bloodshed and conquest”—and beyond. Today, according to geologist Shefa Siegel, we are threatened not by metal, but by its absence. Metal that once lay close enough to the surface of the earth so that primitive miners could more or less chip off what they needed is now so scarce that entire landscapes are pulverized to extract a fine dust of precious, powdered ore.

Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other. Reinterpreting a history previously seen from a Euro-and-anthropocentric viewpoint, Amrith relates in brilliant prose, and on the largest canvas, a magisterial, mind-altering epic - vibrant with stories, characters, vivid images and rich archival resources.

Born out of a desire to know and understand the mysteries of this material, the spiritual and practical applications of clay in both its micro and macro histories, Clay: A Human History is a book of wonder and insight, a hybrid of archaeology, history and lived experience as an amateur potter.