Vince Beiser – författare

The powerful ways the metals we need to fuel technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and rising violence - and how we can do better.An Australian millionaire's plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic.These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential for two crucial technologies: the internet and renewable energy. In Power Metal, Vince Beiser explores the Achilles' heel of "green power" and digital technology - that manufacturing computers, cell phones, electric cars, and other technologies demand skyrocketing amounts of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other materials. 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.Beiser crisscrossed the world to talk to the people involved and report on the damage this race is inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and how we can minimize the damage. Power Metal is a compelling glimpse into this disturbing yet potentially promising new world.

The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives.Except for water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--more than oil, more than natural gas. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, exists because of 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 Chihuly sculptures 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 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 important every day, and some of the people who use it, sell it, recycle it, and destroy it. It''s also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs surrounding sand and the profound global significance, which has received little public attention. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, explaining why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter sand pirates, become aware of child sand miners, and learn that not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, full of fascinating detail and populated by surprising people.