Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium — these foundational materials are literally what the modern world is built on. Without sand for glass, say goodbye to our fiber optic internet. No copper means no conductive wiring. And a world without lithium is a world without rechargeable batteries. For the final installment of Hitting the Books for 2023, we're bringing you an excerpt from the fantastic Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway. A finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year award, Material World walks readers through the seismic impacts these six substances have had on human civilization throughout history, using a masterful mix of narrative storytelling and clear-eyed technical explanation. In the excerpt below, Conway discusses how the lithium ion battery technology that is currently powering the EV revolution came into existence. Thanks very much for reading Hitting the Books this year, we'll be back with more of the best excerpts from new and upcoming technology titles in post-CES January, 2024! Penguin Random House Excerpted from Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway. Published by Knopf. Copyright © 2023 by Ed Conway. All rights reserved. A Better Battery The first engineer to use lithium in a battery was none other than Thomas Edison. Having mastered the manufacture of concrete by focusing religiously on improving the recipe and... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2023-12-24 15:30:10 UTC ]
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Over half a decade later, a new Kickstarter campaign has finally eclipsed Pebble's crowdfunding record on the website. Fantasy and sci-fi author Brandon Sanderson set up a campaign to raise $1 million within 30 days to fund four secret books he intends to release every quarter next year. It... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-03-04 12:57:00 UTC ]
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Concerned about Kickstarter's plans to migrate its platform to blockchain technology, Spike Trotman, publisher of the indie graphic novel house Iron Circus Comics, is stepping away from Kickstarter to launch a new independent crowdfunding platform to fund a new volume of her Poorcraft frugal... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-02-09 05:00:00 UTC ]
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In They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents, Iranian American author and Vice journalist Neda Toloui-Semnani reconstructed the story of her parents as young, leftist Iranian activists radicalized at Berkeley in the late ’60s and who came to see communism as the political answer... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-02-08 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Feeding the planet's 8 billion people is challenge enough and our current industrialized commercial practices are causing such ecological damage that we may soon find ourselves hard-pressed to feed any more. For decades, scientists have sought out higher yields and faster growth at the expense... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-02-05 16:30:43 UTC ]
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Oneworld editor and former Guardian journalist Richard Lea is heading a new web-based short fiction journal, Fictionable, which is aiming to raise £15,000 in the next month on Kickstarter. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-09 17:09:42 UTC ]
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A children's publisher has launched a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to create personalised books for terminally ill children. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-28 04:17:10 UTC ]
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Woody Holton looks beyond the founders to find who shaped the push for independence. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-11-19 13:00:00 UTC ]
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And of course it includes a two-story library — modeled on the Bodleian at Oxford University — for his massive collection of books. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-09-28 09:00:26 UTC ]
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It’s hard to believe that in just a matter of years, foldable devices have gone from the stuff of science fiction to actual usable daily drivers. Here we are today, checking out the third generation of Samsung’s foldables, which the company just launched at its Unpacked event. The Fold 3 is the... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-08-11 14:00:51 UTC ]
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The bloodshed shaped relations between the two countries, writes historian Jeff Guinn. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-07-02 12:00:00 UTC ]
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In a keynote Q&A with HarperOne executive editor Rakesh Satyal, Ijeoma Oluo advocated for ordinary people dismantling racism at the grassroots level and spoke about her forthcoming book, 'Be a Revolution.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-05-26 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Along the coast of California, a vibrant literary community came together, but its many styles could not be defined together. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2021-05-24 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Forty years ago, IBM researcher Charlie Bennett helped usher in the study of quantum mechanics’ impact on computing. IBM is still at it—and so is Bennett. In May 1981, at a conference center housed in a chateau-style mansion outside Boston, a few dozen physicists and computer scientists gathered... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2021-05-07 08:00:30 UTC ]
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Kids can enjoy audiobooks and podcasts too thanks to the child-friendly Yoto Player and its library. Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-04-23 13:00:10 UTC ]
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Patrick Radden Keefe aims to hold the family accountable for its role in the opioid crisis. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-04-08 14:00:00 UTC ]
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As a struggling literary agent in London, he took a chance on J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, turning her books into the most lucrative literary franchise in history. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-01-27 22:39:44 UTC ]
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My assignment was to offer a survey course on the history of English literature in northeast China. I was paired with a young American teacher sponsored by the United Nations who was to teach phonetics and oral expression. We taught six days a week, and every Wednesday afternoon our students... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-15 09:49:40 UTC ]
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Angry Robot has acquired its first novella collection from Hugo Award-winning American author Tim Pratt after seeing the author's Kickstarter campaign for the project. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-05 22:12:51 UTC ]
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Atwood Tate's Lynne Willoughby explains how the company is supporting the government's Kickstart Scheme, and why publishers should too. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-04 21:41:53 UTC ]
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When One Hundred Years of Solitude hit the market in 1967, the book industry in Spanish was booming. This situation was unimaginable for most writers and critics just a few years before. “How can literature exist,” writer Mario Vargas Llosa asked, “in countries where there are no publishing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-09-11 08:48:47 UTC ]
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