Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed, and Wonder

Novelist and travel writer Marsden (The Summer Isles) offers a dazzling account of humanity’s mystical and perilous relationship with rocks, minerals, and metals. He begins with his own fascination with Earth’s minerals, describing how, as a young boy, he spotted glittering stones amid a truckload of gravel dumped in his family’s driveway. He started collecting muddy rocks and breaking them open to reveal beautiful geodes, imbuing in him the belief “that another world lay hidden inside this one.” He goes on to trace humanity’s enchantment with these materials—as well as its tendency to exploit them—detailing how ochre, a rock that can be ground and mixed into a paste, allowed early humans to make art; metals like tin and copper could be forged into tools and weapons, which facilitated agriculture, construction, and warfare; and lithium revolutionized modern technology, powering cars, laptops, and mobile phones. To help bring these materials’ histories to life, Marsden travels across Europe, rappelling down copper mines in England and sifting for gold in Georgian rivers. His passion for geology shines in his accessible explanations and lyrical prose (“Beneath our feet, if we look closely, are shards of heaven”). This is a wonder. (Nov.)