The recap
Mark Miodownik, a materials scientist, begins with a photograph of himself on a rooftop surrounded by ordinary things and asks what they are made of and why it matters. Each chapter takes a single material, among them steel, paper, concrete, chocolate, glass and porcelain, and shows how its hidden structure, from atoms and crystals upward, gives it the qualities we take for granted. Why can a razor blade cut through layers of cloth? What makes paper such a durable home for words? Why does he regard chocolate as one of our great feats of engineering? Woven through the science are histories of invention and small personal stories, starting with the day he was stabbed with a razor and found himself fascinated by the steel that had cut him. The tone is playful, curious and at times lyrical, and the explanations are refreshingly concrete. Readers come away looking at kitchens, streets and buildings as quiet triumphs of engineering, with new respect for the stuff that holds modern life together.
Why read it
For curious minds who like to know how things work, and for anyone who never quite clicked with school chemistry but loves a good story about everyday objects.
Fun facts
- 01
It won the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, worth £25,000, and the judges chose it unanimously.
- 02
Its origin story is a crime: Miodownik was stabbed with a razor through several layers of clothing, which sparked his curiosity about how steel could hold such an edge.
- 03
Every chapter opens with the same rooftop photograph of the author, with a different object circled to mark that chapter's material.
- 04
Miodownik is a materials scientist at University College London.
