Until two weeks ago, Humboldt was one of several famous past scholars I only knew by name. Last month’s release of this short biography was the perfect opportunity to fill this knowledge gap, so I sat down to compare it with Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, which received widespread acclaim ten years ago. Historian Andreas W. Daum shows that good things come in small packages and delivers a factual, nuanced, and admirably concise biography. It also confirmed that reading two biographies back-to-back is a rewarding and instructive exercise. This, then, is the second of a two-part review of the long and remarkable life of Prussian naturalist, scholar, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography, written by Andreas W. Daum, published by Princeton University Press in January 2025 (hardback, 208 pages)

Straight off the bat, you can tell that this will be a different book. First is its size: at 208 pages and measuring some 13 × 21 cm, it is swallowed by The Invention of Nature. Second, though Wulf moved to Germany as a child and is thus equally comfortable parsing German sources, Daum is just that bit more qualified: he is a historian actively researching Humboldt’s biography. Currently based at the University at Buffalo, New York, he was born, raised, and educated in Germany. This book was originally published in German in 2019 by Verlag C.H.Beck, titled simply Alexander von Humboldt. The English translation is by Robert Savage, with Daum actively involved in revising and expanding it while directly translating quotations from German and French to retain their original meaning.

A more detailed comparison between the two biographies follows at the end as I first want to judge this book on its merits. Daum discusses Humboldt’s life in six chapters that (chiefly) cover his childhood and education, his work as a mining inspector and his early publications, his famous expedition through America, his twenty-year stay in Paris, his return to Berlin and journey to Russia, and his final two decades during which Kosmos became the focus of his life. A short interlude chapter reflects on his scientific approach, while the book ends with a chronology (3 pp.), a very useful narrative guide to sources and further reading (9 pp.), endnotes (13 pp.), and a selected bibliography (6 pp.). As mentioned in my previous review, biographies are more than statements of facts, with different writers emphasizing different aspects. Daum has a clear mission statement: to examine Humboldt’s life “through a refined biographical lens [that] avoids both mystification and vilification [and] to suggest a more nuanced interpretation, portraying a multifaceted Humboldt” (p. 3). Two aspects stood out to me.

First, throughout, Daum pushes back on previous portrayals of Humboldt. For example, after acknowledging Nicolaas A. Rupke’s fine analysis of previous biographies, Daum characterises the recent biographies by Wulf and Maren Meinhardt as “popular, heroic accounts” (p. 162) that tend to portray Humboldt as “a singular intellect way ahead of his time” (p. 2). He adds a clear barb at Wulf’s address by writing that Humboldt did not invent nature. He equally objects to linguist Mary Louise Pratt’s postcolonial critique of Humboldt as a gentleman colonizer who “saw non-European worlds primarily with ‘imperial eyes’” (p. 3). Though Daum agrees such criticism is “a necessary corrective to an idealized, glorifying image of the Prussian explorer” (p. 63), it needs to be combined with a fair assessment of his progressive sides. Portrayals of Humboldt as a second Columbus are similarly scorned as “simplistic tropes [that] reflect a colonial worldview” and simply are not true: “Humboldt was not venturing into unknown territory. Nowhere was he the ‘first’” (p. 55). This is true for both the American expedition and his later trip to Russia: naturalists in Estonia had already laid a scientific basis for Russia’s eastward expansion, and Humboldt was not the first researcher to travel here.

“Daum has a clear mission statement: to examine Humboldt’s life “through a refined biographical lens [that] avoids both mystification and vilification” (p. 3)”

More pushback comes when Daum distinguishes between Humboldtian science and Humboldt’s science. Humboldt’s call for systematic collection of geomagnetic and climatological data by networks of observatories, later pursued by both Russia and the UK, has been called an example of Humboldtian science by historian Susan Faye Cannon. Daum counters that this is a later archetype that “drew on Humboldt and his ideal of systematic measurements and quantification but jettisoned his emphasis on the aesthetic” (p. 124). Humboldt’s science, in contrast, was far more tentative, trying to balance empirical science with one’s subjective experience of nature. He did not have it all figured out before or after his American expedition. To suggest otherwise is “a retrospective projection that doesn’t do justice to his ongoing struggle to collect and generate knowledge” (p. 52). Finally, though Humboldt is venerated in South America and he welcomed declarations of independence, he played no role in them: “the label ‘father of Latin American independence’ is an […] ahistorical, heroizing trope” (p. 109).

Beyond criticism, the second aspect that stood out to me is Daum’s nuanced picture of Humboldt. Take, for example, his political stance, or lack thereof. Though Humboldt is remembered for his liberal values and criticism of colonialism and slavery, he feared bloody violence, such as seen during the French Revolution and favoured more gradual reforms. When Prussia took the fight to Napoleon and occupied Paris in 1814, his brother Wilhelm supported the German cause while Alexander refused to, “souring relations between the two” (p. 105). Humboldt helped prevent the Paris Museum of Natural History from being looted and drew criticism back in Germany when lobbying for stolen German artworks to stay in Paris. He supported and found patronage for French and German scientists alike and, by refusing to pick sides, easily moved in different social circles. When he later returned to Berlin with its increasingly conservative political climate that curbed freedom of expression, he swam against the tide by offering free public lectures that became incredibly popular.

Daum gives a similarly nuanced picture of Humboldt’s way of working. Hearing of his grand plans for the American expedition, his brother was already concerned he would overreach. Indeed, he habitually bit off more than he could chew, always had multiple manuscripts on the go, and left a legacy of unfinished projects. The American travel narrative, between various translations and abridgments, became “so fiendishly complicated […] it still has the power to drive experts, librarians, and readers to despair” (p. 99) and resembled “a construction site of knowledge” (p. 100). Kosmos, the magnum opus he laboured on for the last two decades of his life, was not necessarily a resounding success either, despite the high sales. Some contemporaries called it a challenging work, while others mentioned many readers put it down as it required too much prior knowledge. Ironically, the proliferation of simplified versions and explainers meant that Humboldt succeeded, sort of, in popularizing science, though it “had taken on a momentum that the author could no longer control” (p. 142). Daum’s characterisation of Kosmos as “more a synopsis of a mass of materials than a coherently argued synthesis” (p. 141) is exhibit A for his conclusion that Humboldt is remembered not for coming up with “a clearly defined theory that fundamentally changed scientific and social thinking“, but for leaving us with “myriad complex thoughts and incentives for further research” (p. 151).

“The book’s brevity is partially achieved by omitting all the biographical material on other people that Wulf included and partially by mentioning rather than describing events in lively detail.”

Given the number of people who will have read Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, a comparison is in order. My one-liner is that Daum’s book is less fluff, more facts. The book’s brevity is partially achieved by omitting all the biographical material on other people that Wulf included and partially by mentioning rather than describing events in lively detail. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to Humboldt’s expeditions. For example, where Wulf detailed his quest to find the Casiquiare river to establish whether the Orinoco and Amazon river basins were linked, Daum mentions this in a single sentence. In the process, he misses a beat as it is another good example of Humboldt not being “first”: Wulf mentions how local missionaries told him it had been figured out decades earlier. His travel partner in the Americas, Aimé Bonpland, is basically invisible, and there is virtually nothing about their working relationship or Humboldt’s later frustrations about his tardiness in writing up the botanical volumes beyond mention that “the less efficient” (p. 102) Bonpland was replaced by Carl Sigismund Kunth. And where Wulf cracked me up with her description of Humboldt’s audacious unscheduled detours in Russia, Daum merely mentions that he presented his hosts with a “fait accompli” (p. 122).

Now, before you conclude that Daum’s book contains less material than Wulf’s, let me stop you there. For all its brevity, there are numerous details here not mentioned by Wulf. Humboldt grew up speaking French. He had a half-brother, Heinrich von Holwede, who remains a complete enigma. He witnessed a solar eclipse while in today’s Venezuela. But beyond factoids, there are the aspects I highlighted above (the corrections to previous depictions of Humboldt, his political stance, his approach to work); there is attention for his lesser-known works; a more informed opinion on his sexuality; and many other things besides. In a mere 153 pages, Daum concisely offers a full yet nuanced picture of Humboldt’s life and work.

If you have already read The Invention of Nature, should you read this biography? Next to being a quick read, hopefully by now you are convinced Daum’s book is worth your time by offering a different perspective and much new information. If you have the bandwidth and inclination, I would even recommend you either reread Wulf’s book or, if you have not yet done so, read them together—I found the exercise both instructive and rewarding. If you insist on me recommending just one book, answer me this: do you read history books to be informed or to be entertained? In the former case, choose Daum for a more scholarly take; in the latter, choose Wulf for an entertaining book that indulges in digressions. I hasten to add that I am talking shades of grey here: Daum prioritising the facts does not mean his book is boring, just as Wulf prioritising storytelling does not mean her book is inaccurate.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Alexander von Humboldt

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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This is the conclusion of a trio of reviews on communication in (non)human animals. The previously reviewed The Voices of Nature and Why Animals Talk offered, respectively, a foray into animal bioacoustics and a thought-provoking answer to the question of why animals need to talk in the first place. Though highlighting that we routinely underestimate animals, both books also agreed that human language really is unique and unlike anything heard in other species. So, what is all of our chatter good for? Talking Heads argues that conversation is the glue that bonds us together as the hypersocial animals that we are; a process by which we co-create cognitive realities such as collective memories, cultures, and, if neuroscientist Shane O’Mara is to be believed, even countries.

Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds, written by Shane O’Mara, published by The Bodley Head in August 2023 (hardback, 240 pages)

What the title of the book does not immediately reveal is the other important ingredient of human language: memory. To have meaningful conversations we draw on (shared) memories. To demonstrate just how fundamental this is, O’Mara opens the book with the case of patient H.M. (his full name was Henry Molaison) who became the most tested patient in the history of psychology. After a childhood accident left him suffering from epileptic fits, he underwent experimental brain surgery in 1953 that relieved his epilepsy but caused permanent amnesia, leaving him unable to form new long-term memories. It also made it impossible to have any meaningful conversation with him.

The first few chapters set the stage by going into the basics of both conversation and memory. For example, what is conversation? At its simplest, it is a dialogue between two people that involves taking turns speaking and listening. In addition, we have an internal conversation, a monologue with ourselves, that psychologists started to access via introspection, then self-reporting, and lately also brain scans. One interesting finding is that our description of what we experience in the moment is often rather different from our subsequent evaluation of that experience. O’Mara gives a memorable quote from Daniel Kahneman: “I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me” (p. 58). Much of our conversation involves readily sharing personal details and experiences, and we expect the same from our conversational partners, in the process building connection, understanding, and trust. That, of course, draws on memories. A core idea O’Mara posits here is that “a key function of our memories is intimately supporting social communication” (p. 43). However, our memory is notoriously unreliable: it does not record the world as if it were a video camera, we tweak and update it constantly in conversation with others. This list should give you a decent idea of the basics that O’Mara covers here.

The thrust of Talking Heads is that all this chatter allows us to live hypersocial and highly interdependent lives that see humans create all sorts of cognitive realities and entities. Three of these merit further exploration.

“No mind is an island and our recollections depend on the people around us.”

First is that conversation allows us to form collective memories. In yet another example of O’Mara subtly teaching you about the history of his discipline, he invokes psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett who almost a century ago showed that memory is about more than just reciting bare facts; there is a strong social side to it and we are compulsive storytellers (something scientists need to be reminded of to this day). No mind is an island and our recollections depend on the people around us. Sociologist Maurice Halbwachs coined the term collective memory for it. So where is memory located then? Two quotations characterise the essence beautifully, I think. First is O’Mara’s general observation that “memory emerges from the interaction between the brain and the world” (p. 95). And, regarding cultural knowledge specifically, he adds that it “resides within the brains of the members of that society, but emerges as the result of interactions between members of that society” (p. 102).

This bridges nicely to the second cognitive reality birthed by our conversations: culture. In a few places, O’Mara reaches back to his opening gambit about amnesia and asks you to imagine that you, or your society, became amnesiacs overnight. How would you pass on any information and customs to the next generation? You could not. This is more than just a goofy thought experiment: O’Mara only has to point out the archaeological record which is full of signs and symbols that have become uninterpretable and illegible. They have, in the words of neuroscientist Erik Hoel, become epistemologically inaccessible to us. The take-home message is that, for culture to survive over time, you need living, remembering people who engage in conversations. Though O’Mara largely sidesteps any comparisons to animals in this book, I feel it would be remiss of me not to mention the hotly debated topic of culture in animals, with answers ranging from “no, they don’t” to “yes, they do“.

O’Mara’s third and most ambitious proposal is “a neuroscience of nation building” (p. 19), the idea that even nations started as conversations. I admit that it has several things going for it. O’Mara agrees with influential political scientist Benedict Anderson that nations are imagined communities: they are cognitive constructs that we imagine together. Nation building involves mental time travel to agree on a shared past and future, appealing to both our memory and our imagination. Nationalist sentiments seem to arise readily given our tribal nature and are a familiar example of a powerful story. Though it unites people, it is easily abused by politicians which is dangerous in light of the abovementioned malleability of our memory. He contrasts nationalism with the historian’s craft as instead being a national identity project that is intolerant of ambiguity and counterevidence, and that seeks to protect social identity at all cost, disregarding information that threatens it. O’Mara concludes with a powerful warning: stories of our past are just that, stories, and they primarily serve to buttress our membership of social groups in the here and now.

“O’Mara’s third and most ambitious proposal is […] that even nations started as conversations. […] they are cognitive constructs that we imagine together.”

That said, as with any ambitious proposal, this one is open to criticism. O’Mara admits early on that writing this book was “an exercise in exclusion” (p. 19), necessarily simplifying some things and omitting others. Though I am not familiar with the literature, I am sure that fields such as sociology, anthropology, history, economics, and political science have a thing or two to say about nation building. Furthermore, he makes a few statements about the emergence of nations (that they require the loss of authority of scriptural language and biblical texts, as well as the erosion of the divine right of kings) that sound narrowly Eurocentric to me. Did nations not arise elsewhere and at earlier times without the loss of religion? What even counts as a nation and when did this process start? Not offering a definition of a nation seems an oversight.

Overall, Talking Heads is an intriguing book that is strongest on the psychology and neuroscience of conversation. I especially enjoyed the frequent callouts to the history of the discipline. I think he makes a strong case that conversation is an underappreciated facet that powerfully shapes many aspects of our lives. Especially his argument that “the intensive focus on memory as a personal phenomenon […] causes us to miss these larger [social] perspectives” (p. 175) is well taken. However, when it comes to explanations for some of humanity’s cognitive projects such as nations, conversation strikes me as, well, only one of several narrative strands that would need to be considered.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Talking Heads

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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The Industrial Revolution has been a mixed blessing. Although it improved living standards and brought material prosperity to many, humanity and the environment have paid a high price, not least in the form of pollution. The Contamination of the Earth catalogues the many forms of past pollution but also examines the social and political aspects of it. In other words, how people were affected by it and responded to it, and how legislation and politics allowed it to happen, to persist, and to only grow with time. This sprawling and information-dense environmental history work does full justice to this large and serious topic, but be prepared for a read that is neither light nor uplifting.

The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age, written by François Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux, translated by  Janice Egan and Michael Egan, published by MIT Press in July 2020 (hardback, 459 pages)

This book was originally written in French by historians François Jarrige and Thomas le Roux and published in 2017 as La Contamination du Monde by Éditions Seuil. MIT Press publishes it as part of their History for a Sustainable Future Series, translated into English by husband-and-wife duo Janice and Michael Egan. The latter is one of the series editors and in his foreword mentions their decision to adhere to the French plural “pollutions” throughout the book to stress the many forms they take and the many origins they have. To an English audience, some writing might come across as rather convoluted and descriptive. To me, this suggests that the translation never strays far from the original, capturing that certain je ne sais quoi of the French language.

The Contamination of the Earth examines the period 1700–1973 in three parts: the emergence of industry from 1700 to 1830, its intensification and entrenchment in society from 1830 to 1914, and its diversification and ascent to world domination from 1914 to 1973.

In my reading, this book presents two faces to its reader. The first is already implied by the subtitle: a historical overview of pollutions during the industrial age. Though not encyclopaedic, it gives a very good feel for the sometimes literally breathtaking diversity of pollutions, especially the many now-forgotten ones. It serves as a healthy corrective to the idea that the past was a green and pleasant land, describing the pollutions from early factories producing e.g. textiles, paper, gunpowder, and metals; and the environmental legacy of the early mining industry in South America. The story of the Industrial Revolution is normally one of coal, steel, and steam engines, but also saw the rise of a chemical industry that used increasingly toxic heavy metals and concentrated acids to refine ingredients and produce a wide array of everyday objects. The discovery of petroleum might have rid us of the pollutions of horses, but gave us those of motorised transport in return. And the 20th century added plastics, nuclear waste, new pesticides, the Green Revolution in agriculture, planned obsolescence, and, from the 1950s onwards, the double whammy of increased population and affluence during the Great Acceleration, to name but some topics explored here.

“[The] historical overview […] gives a very good feel for the sometimes literally breathtaking diversity of pollutions [and] serves as a healthy corrective to the idea that the past was a green and pleasant land”

Several noteworthy themes emerge from this catalogue of waste. Despite their promises, many technologies only add more forms of pollution rather than displacing old ones. We still burn coal—more than ever in absolute terms actually—while Vaclav Smil cleverly titled one of his books Still the Iron Age. Another promise is that pollutions can be reduced, and efficiency increased, through technological inventions. Yet, the rebound effect means we inevitably consume and pollute more. One pernicious detail regarding mining is decreasing ore grades. We have extracted the richest ores first and need to mine and refine ever-larger amounts of raw material for the same quantity of metals, while simultaneously using more of them, multiplying pollutions dramatically. The authors do not mention the endgame to this (perhaps because it lies in the future), determined by energy returned on energy invested. Finally, some processes result in many more pollutions than is first apparent. Good examples from this book are wars and cars. The former obviously results in immediate destruction, but both world wars also involved mobilization phases in which environmental concerns were sidelined, while afterwards now-larger industries needed to find new ways to monetize their infrastructure. The latter are much more than just their tailpipe emissions, think production, maintenance, disposal, and an infrastructure that has created car-dependent landscapes. This is rarely mentioned in the current push for electric cars.

However, the real value of this book, and the one I think will be much appreciated by historians and other scholars, is the second face this book presents: the social and political history. Through numerous examples, Jarrige and Le Roux show that “between fatalism, resignation, complaints, and insurrections, pollutions were hardly accepted in tacit silence” (p. 143), and this is true throughout the history of industry. These concerns were expressed as much by the well-heeled as by the labourers on the factory floors. Simultaneously, some developments, such as electricity and industries setting up shop overseas, have created a divide between consumers and producers, rendering “almost imperceptible to the public the increase in emissions of toxic substances in the environment” (p. 237), at least in developed nations.

“today’s failed attempts at curbing and regulating pollution have a long history […] The same forces and dynamics […] are still at work, with techno-optimism and economic prosperity dominating the narrative”

What I found particularly enlightening is how the authors show that today’s failed attempts at curbing and regulating pollution have a long history. This takes you through some bizarre episodes such as the French hygienist movement that “was unmistakably a form of industrialism” (p. 119) and turned to chemistry to e.g. praise the antiseptic and health benefits of polluting fumes. It shows how, despite the difference in the type of law in force in the Anglo–American world (common law) versus mainland Europe (specific legislation on pollutions), the outcome was the same: fines and financial settlements that just became another line on company budgets. It shows the long history of industries denying and obfuscating evidence of pollutions and how sock-puppet scientists willing to sow doubt have been amongst us from the start. It shows how industry experts have dominated the conversation around solving pollutions, promoting recycling, dilution (think smokestacks), and the hollow promise of technofixes, but never questioning production itself. And how politicians, influenced by generations of industry lobbies and economic theories, have shown “a devoted and dedicated commitment to economic growth” (p. 320), treating pollutions as “acceptable, and even desirable” (p. 62).

The historical survey ends in 1973, just as the environmental movement gathered pace, famous NGOs were established, and green parties entered politics. The authors argue that the developments since then would require a separate book. Nevertheless, an extensive epilogue takes a first stab at this. As we know, what looked like a turn for the better was but a diversion. The same forces and dynamics outlined throughout the book are still at work, with techno-optimism and economic prosperity dominating the narrative and marginalizing the few voices who argue otherwise. Of note, they criticize the birth of the “paralyzing oxymoron” of sustainable development: “A propaganda tool for companies engaged in greenwashing [that] resembles more and more an empty promise used to maintain the status quo” (pp. 297–298). And they highlight how globalization, supported by the shipping industry (and, might I add, the shady sector of commodity traders), has allowed developed nations to smugly clean up their act at home by offshoring polluting forms of extraction and production to other continents. “The problem of environmental injustice has been renewed on a global scale” (p. 310), effectively reaching its logical endpoint.

The 80+ pages of notes give an entry point to a huge field of literature, French and otherwise. Only one factor that has contributed to the continued increase in pollutions seem to be missing to me: that of shifting baselines, the idea that each generation takes the state of their environment as the new normal, leading to a form of generational amnesia. This, of course, highlights exactly why this book is worth your time. Overall, The Contamination of the Earth is an ambitious book that offers a global overview of the history of industrial pollution. I found that reading it weighed on my mind, but I take that as a good sign: if a book on industrial pollution does not cause you some anxiety it is not doing its job properly.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Contamination of the Earth

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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I will make no secret of my love of J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. Equally, I am always entertained by books looking at the science behind fictional worlds depicted in books, movies, and TV series. The Science of Middle Earth is a remarkable undertaking, with three editors bringing together contributions on a wide range of topics, from humanities such as sociology and philosophy, to natural sciences such as geomorphology, chemistry, and evolutionary biology. Tying it together are Arnaud Rafaelian’s beautiful drawings that immediately draw your attention. Both a serious appreciation of Tolkien’s world and an entertaining work of popular science, this book hit the sweet spot.

The Science of Middle-Earth: A New Understanding of Tolkien and His World, edited by Roland Lehoucq, Loic Mangin, and Jean-Sébastien Steyer, illustrated by Arnaud Rafaelian, published by Pegasus Books in June 2021 (hardback, 432 pages)

Before I delve in, a couple of things to note. First, virtually all contributors to this book are French because this is a translation (courtesy of Tina Kover) of the French book Tolkien et les Sciences, published in 2019 by Belin Éditeur. Second, this is not the first book by this title. Some of you might be familiar with Henry Gee’s two editions of The Science of Middle Earth and wonder how the two compare. Unfortunately, I do not actually have this book, and my impression is that it has flown under many people’s radar. However, looking at some previews suggests that its tone is similar (popular science rather than scholarly analysis) and that there is some overlap in topics (mithril, spiders, and oliphaunts immediately caught my eye). You will certainly want to read this book if you have Gee’s book, and conversely, even after reviewing this book, I still want to read his take on the subject.

For this book, astrophysicist Roland Lehoucq, science magazine editor Loïc Mangin, and palaeontologist Jean-Sébastien Steyer have brought together no fewer than 37 contributors from a wide range of academic disciplines to contribute 40 chapters under six thematic headings. The sheer breadth of topics is quite astonishing. The book opens with the humanities: the sociological character of certain races and alliances, the relatedness of the many fictional languages Tolkien created, the depiction of philosophy in the books, or the historiography that characterises his work. Tolkien spent an inordinate amount of effort on describing how myths and legends had been passed down the ages, all the way from the god-like Ainur and Valar, through the Elves, to the men and Hobbits in the Third Age. He even blurred the lines between fiction and reality, fashioning himself a chronicler rather than a creator, supposedly translating texts that had come to him from Ælfwine, an Anglo-Saxon mariner.

Most of the book, though, deals with the natural sciences, with chapters covering e.g. the geomorphology and climate of Middle-Earth, the chemistry of the One Ring, the anatomy of Hobbit feet, the possible link between oliphaunts and extinct and extant proboscideans, the birds observed in Middle-Earth, the biology of dragons such as Smaug and Glaurung (and the question of whether they could fly), or the nature of the tentacled Watcher in the Water that guards the entrance to the mines of Moria. And that is to name but a few! The one notable topic absent here, other than a chapter on vegetation zones, is botany. However, seeing how thoroughly this was covered in Flora of Middle-Earth, this is quite understandable.

“Could Ents exist? There are real-world examples of animals resembling plants, and Ents could be imagined as chimaeras of giant, photosynthetic stick insects capable of sessile periods.”

Most of these chapters take one of two approaches. First, several authors examine where Tolkien could have gotten his inspiration from, turning to history and mythology. Luc Vivès and Christine Argot remark that “Tolkien’s work is unique in that it forms the first interface between cycles, sagas, and epics on one hand, and nomenclatures, dictionaries, and encyclopedias on the other […] coming as close as possible to being a study of the natural world perceived mythologically, and mythology perceived as natural” (p. 277). They call his world a “cosmogenic melting-pot” with traces of biblical texts, Celtic legends, Welsh folklore, Norse fairy tales, Scandinavian Eddas, Icelandic sagas and the Kalevala, Finland’s epic poem. Other authors comment on the places that inspired Middle-Earth, examine the sources of Tolkien’s dragons, or ask how much of the character of Beorn the man-bear draws on the legendary Viking berserker warriors.

The second approach many chapters take is to probe the realism of Middle-Earth. Though Tolkien openly denounced scientific materialism and the technological totalitarianism it fostered, he was at the same time a rigorous scholar who strived for internal consistency in his fiction and spent a lifetime creating a highly detailed and believable world. Some of his ideas violate laws of nature: scaling relationships make the flight of dragons and giant eagles highly improbable. Other ideas are reasonably plausible: one chapter discusses the possible properties explaining the excellent eyesight of Elves. Some are even close to realistic: could Ents exist? There are real-world examples of animals resembling plants, and Ents could be imagined as chimaeras of giant, photosynthetic stick insects capable of sessile periods, rooted on the spot like corals.

Some chapters reflect on the state of science in his time—volcanology in the 1930–50s was not what it is today and the theory of plate tectonics only became accepted decades after his works had been published. Others consider how Tolkien’s work shows his interest in, and knowledge of, disciplines such as speleology, mining, and metallurgy. Yet others are a springboard for expositions on e.g. materials science (how would you make an invisibility cloak or a metal such as mithril?) or are entertaining thought experiments. Can we run a climatological model for Middle-Earth or draw up a phylogenetic tree for the humanoids populating it? Yes we can, and this is what it would look like.

“The editors have done a formidable job reigning in all contributors, as I am sure they could have written a great deal more about their respective topics.”

This book is squarely for the Tolkien fan. Now, some people in the fandom take his work very seriously. Those who have delved into the 3-volume Tolkien Companion or the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, or read publications by professional Tolkien scholars such as Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond, or Verlyn Flieger might find this book lacking in depth. My impression is that they are not the primary audience—this is popular science rather than scholarly treatise. I would actually argue that the brevity of these chapters, the vast majority of which run 7–10 pages only, is admirable. The editors have done a formidable job reigning in all contributors, as I am sure they could have written a great deal more about their respective topics. Nevertheless, they all approach their subject thoroughly and seriously, going well beyond Middle-Earth as described in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Many authors consider details from The Silmarillion, the 12-volume History of Middle Earth, Tolkien’s letters, and other writings on and by him, as well as, occasionally, Peter Jackson’s movies.

Finally, I have to commend Arnaud Rafaelian‘s beautiful and tastefully executed drawings. As much as I worship Alan Lee (his pictures grace my walls), it is refreshing to see Tolkien’s world depicted by a new illustrator. Also worth mentioning are the infographics, most of which are drawn by Dianne Rottner whose style meshes perfectly with Rafaelian’s. Add illustrated endpapers and decorated initials opening each chapter and this book is, in one word, sumptuous in its presentation.

Unbeknownst to me, there is a thriving Francophone Tolkien community out there. I think that Pegasus Books did very well in picking up this book for translation—this was very much worth the effort. The Science of Middle Earth comes warmly recommended for Tolkien fans and is already a precious addition to my collection.

Edit: Since publishing this review several people have pointed out that, unfortunately, this book contains various factual errors, which has disappointed serious fans. Others have pointed out that many contributors lack relevant in-depth knowledge and argue oversights could have been addressed had the book been proofread by one or more Tolkien scholars. I normally steer clear of reading other reviews when preparing mine, so as not to be influenced by other people’s words and ideas too much, but in this case that bit me in the behind—and is, yes, a bit embarrassing. I still think that overall this is an entertaining pop-science book that is beautifully presented, but serious Tolkien fans might also want to have a look at Kristine Larsen’s extended review in the Journal of Tolkien Research, volume 12(2) to make up their mind.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Science of Middle-Earth

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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So far, most of the books I have read on the COVID-19 pandemic have either been of the backwards-looking, how-did-we-get-here type, or have dealt with practical virological, epidemiological, or immunological details. I picked up Apollo’s Arrow as it promised a forward-looking perspective while drawing parallels with past pandemics. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and sociologist directing the Human Nature Lab in Yale, got drafted into working on the pandemic from the start, tracking the spread of the virus, and sat at the bedside of many dying patients while working as a hospice doctor in New York. I believe we need to hear these frontline stories.

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, written by Nicholas A. Christakis, published by Little, Brown & Company in November 2020 (hardback, 384 pages)

Accompanied by excellent infographics by Cavan Huang, Apollo’s Arrow provides you with all the basics in case you need them. Christakis starts with an overview of how the virus was first detected in China and then spread around the world. He details the differences with the SARS and Spanish Flu pandemics to explain why COVID-19 became so destructive, along the way introducing epidemiological parameters and details such as infection fatality rates, case fatality rates, the basic reproduction number R₀, herd immunity, asymptomatic transmission, the concept of flattening the curve, and how exponential growth keeps catching us out. Usefully, he also discusses the full range of non-pharmaceutical interventions that we have at our disposal: physical distancing, mask-wearing (a basic topic some other authors have omitted), testing and tracing, border closures, and lockdown.

Throughout, Christakis includes eyewitness testimony of, and insightful comparisons to, past pandemics. From recent ones such as SARS, influenza pandemics in 1957 and 1968, and the Spanish Flu, to historical ones such as the bubonic plague or the plague of Athens, pandemics have long been with us, shaping the course of history. I think there is much value in providing historical perspective, and there is no shortage of recent books surveying pandemics through the ages, many now being reissued with new chapters or added prefaces. What sets apart Apollo’s Arrow is that it focuses on COVID-19 through the eyes of a physician who is interested in history. As Christakis discusses the short, medium, and long-term consequences of the pandemic, the past is a constant companion to show that “What happened in 2020 was not new to our species. It was just new to us” (p. 84).

“As Christakis discusses the […] consequences of the pandemic, the past is a constant companion to show that “What happened in 2020 was not new to our species. It was just new to us“”

There are the familiar companions of grief, over lives and livelihoods lost; fear, and the scapegoats on who we take it out; and lies, the conspiracy theories and propaganda. What has not helped the disease being taken seriously, Christakis writes, is that COVID-19 lacks visible symptoms. And with many people dying alone in healthcare facilities, “Americans did not see how the virus did its awful work” (p. 204). As has historically happened, much of the impact ran along the faultlines of existing inequalities, with groups such as Hispanic and African American communities, homeless people, prisoners, or meatpackers particularly hard-hit. But the coverage here is not all negative. Unsurprisingly from an author who wrote Blueprint, he highlights the healthcare workers who put their lives on the line, and the altruism and charity as everyday people helped each other in myriad ways. The penultimate chapter is a grab bag of observations and questions—some speculative, others less so—on how the pandemic affected for instance the environment, children and education, the economy and supply chains, jobs, religious beliefs, or practices in public health care.

I was particularly pleased to see Christakis repeatedly mention the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: “The lack of scientific literacy, capacity for nuance, and honest leadership” (p. 320). Unique to our time, social media provided “a bonanza of disinformation” (p. 151), while academic preprint servers containing unvetted information proved to be a double-edged sword. It has been galling to see basic, uncontroversial hygiene practices being drawn into politicized discussions over “personal freedom”, ignoring its partner-in-crime, “collective responsibility”. Or to see delusional wishful thinking, as if the pandemic “could end by fiat” (p. 319). Christakis reminds us that “[…] denial is an old ally of pathogens” (p. 157).

“[Unless] you have religiously kept up with the deluge of news items and opinion pieces on the pandemic […] this book is a welcome and well-written perspective from a qualified professional, looking forward from his particular point in time.”

For those inclined to unwarranted accusations at the address of “elitist academics”, the above is coming from a physician critical of his own profession. He thinks the privacy lost to contact tracing apps is not worth the limited epidemiological benefits and high likelihood of false positives. He remarks on the surprisingly small role of medicine in the historic decline of most infectious diseases, which are instead largely due to socioeconomic improvements and basic public health measures. And he points to iatrogenesis: illness or injury caused by medical actions, something that actually declined during the pandemic as many operations and hospital visits were delayed.

So far, so good. Christakis offers plenty of sharp observations to digest. I have, however, two caveats. First, as the publisher’s blurb also points out, this book is rather US-centric. Second, the book is dated in places. This is not a criticism of the author; rather, the pandemic is a rapidly moving target and I am to blame for reading this book as late as I have. Especially his concern that we might not have vaccines in good time seems cautious with the benefit of hindsight. Their rapid development has been a noteworthy achievement, and other authors are already lining up to tell these success stories. I hasten to add that it has been a typical human achievement, replete with follies such as vaccine nationalism as countries competed to secure supplies.

Even though some of Christakis’s questions and concerns have been supplanted by new ones, many others remain. If you have religiously kept up with the deluge of news items and opinion pieces on the pandemic, a lot has already been discussed since. But I imagine that for many readers, myself included, life will have gotten in the way. If so, then this book is a welcome and well-written perspective from a qualified professional, looking forward from his particular point in time. It does present the author and the publisher with a challenge for the paperback that is slated for October 2021. Reissuing the book as-is does not strike me as very useful. But bringing it up to date with the many developments since then would be a mighty task, tantamount to rewriting it. If Christakis were to go down the route of a thorough update, I have no hesitation in recommending that you buy the paperback upon release. I can see how the hardback will have been very impactful upon publication last year, and I found the comparisons with past pandemics to be particularly eye-opening.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Apollo’s Arrow

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Students of genetics and evolution might be familiar with the name of J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964), particularly for his contributions to population genetics. What I did not realise before reading A Dominant Character was that he had many more strings to his bow and was a larger-than-life character. In a fascinating biography that never seeks to downplay his complicated character, journalist Samanth Subramanian effortlessly switches back and forth between Haldane’s personal life and his many scientific contributions.

A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane, written by Samanth Subramanian, published in the UK by Atlantic Books in August 2020 (hardback, 385 pages)

Haldane was not an easy man. In his interactions with others, Subramanian characterises him as grouchy, delighting in provocation, and blunt to the point of hostility. His life offers plenty of drama for a biographer to work with. Following his father’s example, he routinely experimented on himself for his physiological research on respiration, locking himself in airtight chambers or snacking on chemicals to change the acidity of his blood. He unexpectedly relished the experience of trench warfare during World War I: “what mystified even him, although only in retrospect, was his taste for the violence and pleasure he took in killing an enemy” (p. 88). But two decades later, during voluntary visits to a Spain torn by civil war, the “lopsided nature of power in aerial bombing” (p. 218) deeply unsettled him. His first marriage to Charlotte Franken in 1926 started as an affair while she was still married and became a public scandal when a tribunal ejected Haldane from his biochemistry readership at Cambridge, which he overturned in an appeal. His second marriage to Helen Spurway in 1945 similarly blossomed from an affair while his first marriage frayed over childlessness and mutual infidelity. And at the age of 65 he emigrated to India, publicly announcing his disgust with Britain’s handling of the 1956 Suez crisis.

Besides these colourful episodes, there were two difficult topics where I thought Subramanian excelled in neither vilifying nor exonerating Haldane, but presenting him as the complicated, contrarian person he was.

First was that of eugenics, which was all the rage at the beginning of the 20th century. Though Haldane considered “many of the deeds done in America in the name of eugenics […] about as much justified by science as were the proceedings of the inquisition by the gospels” (p. 138), in a 1928 speech he commended the work done by the Eugenics Education Society in encouraging certain people to reproduce, but not others. Subramanian adds that “to his credit, he would go on to revise this notion, arguing decades later that human diversity was not only desirable but was a signal of social liberty” (p. 139). Regarding race, Haldane “scoffed at any nostalgia for bygone racial perfection [yet] could still lapse into shoddy generalization […] He was not a bigot, but he was also not fully exempt from the preconceptions held by those around him” (p. 139–140).

“[…] there were two difficult topics where I thought Subramanian excelled in neither vilifying nor exonerating Haldane […]”

Second was his strongly held political convictions, which landed him in far hotter waters. He slid from socialism in his youth to communism in adulthood, enamoured by several visits to the Soviet Union. MI5, Britain’s Security Service, took a keen interest in Haldane but was never able to decide whether he represented a threat. Subramanian clears him of recently made accusations of being a Soviet spy, “if espionage involves the deliberate transfer of secrets to another state, nothing stains Haldane’s innocence at all” (p. 257). Instead, it is the Russian agronomist Trofim Lysenko that stains his reputation. Lysenko pushed a pseudoscientific idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics* and applied this to crops, promising greatly enhanced yields. Once he secured the backing of Stalin, he purged Soviet academia of the dangerous Western idea of genetics. Numerous scientists were arrested and murdered, including a good friend of Haldane, the famous seed collector Nikolai Vavilov. And yet, Haldane, “the devotee of the scientific method” (p. 26), could never muster more than half-hearted criticism of Lysenko, and always while arguing his ideas had some merit. Subramanian insightfully concludes that this was about Haldane’s “[…] emotional attachment to the party. Admitting he was wrong about Lysenko would mean admitting he was wrong about Communism and the nature of Stalin’s regime” (p. 262).

Despite his many flaws and idiosyncrasies, Haldane was also a genius, and Subramanian effortlessly weaves Haldane’s many scientific achievements into his narrative. This was a time when Mendel’s findings had only just resurfaced and various other explanations were still competing with Darwin’s notion of natural selection. Haldane wrote a series of ten papers, collectively known as A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection, that provided just that. It made him an important contributor to the nascent discipline of population genetics and what later became known as the modern evolutionary synthesis. He made the first estimates of mutation rates in humans and, in a paper written with his sister, demonstrated the first example of genetic linkage (certain traits inheriting together because of their proximity on a chromosome). His work on heterozygote advantage in thalassemia patients preempted the Anthony Allison’s findings on sickle cell anemia. And his name lives on in Haldane’s rule (the observation that sterile or inviable hybrids are usually the heterogametic sex), the Oparin–Haldane hypothesis (life arose from biochemical reactions between organic compounds), and the Briggs–Haldane equation that describes enzyme kinetics.

“Despite his many flaws and idiosyncrasies, Haldane was also a genius, and Subramanian effortlessly weaves Haldane’s many scientific achievements into his narrative.”

If that was not enough, his 1924 book Daedalus predicted peak oil, the switch to wind and solar energy, the hydrogen fuel cell, and test-tube babies. From the 1930s onwards he started writing popular science articles on virtually every topic under the sun in numerous newspapers and magazines (notable ones were later bundled in books), and he started a lively correspondence with readers. Arthur C. Clarke, of all people, called him “the most brilliant science popularizer of his generation” and Subramanian beautifully captures the spirit of his inquisitive mind: “On every front of science, he seemed to know every journal article being published, every item of research being conducted, as if scientists confided their dreams to him every morning before heading off to their laboratories” (p. 4).

A Dominant Character is the third biography of Haldane after Ronald Clark’s in 1968 and Krishna Dronamraju’s in 2017. The latter was the last PhD student to work with Haldane before he died. Not having read these I cannot compare them to A Dominant Character. What I will say is that this book is well researched. Subramanian has drawn on archives at eighteen institutes in five countries and some of his footnotes are so detailed that you know exactly what to expect if you were to check these out for yourself. More importantly, Subramanian braids together Haldane’s academic genius and his colourful personal life into an incredibly enjoyable biography that effortlessly switches back and forth between the two. A book that is hard to put down once you start it.

* For those who now think “but what about epigenetics?”, good point, and there are some who seek to rehabilitate Lysenko. And—to insert one of my catchphrases—there is a book about that.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

A Dominant Character

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Normally the sight of photovoltaic panels and wind turbines fills me with hope, but I have my doubts after reading this book. Many politicians, business leaders, and environmental organisations argue that we need to invest in renewables to transition away from fossil fuels and the accompanying carbon dioxide emissions. What is rarely mentioned is that these technologies require the mining of rare metals: chemical elements such as rhenium, lithium, antimony, neodymium, tantalum, and many others that most people have barely heard of. In The Rare Metals War, French investigative journalist Guillaume Pitron sounds the alarm, showing both the environmental impact and China’s chokehold on the market.

I read this book in tandem with David S. Abraham’s slightly older The Elements of Power which I had been meaning to read for ages. Thus, this is the second of a two-part review dealing with these little-known elements that have silently come to dominate our lives.

The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies, written by Guillaume Pitron, published by Scribe Publications in January 2021 (paperback, 263 pages)

This book was originally published in French in 2018 as La Guerre des Métaux Rares and was swiftly translated into eight languages. Although the publisher does not mention it, the English version has been updated, referencing events and reports up to 2019. Bianca Jacobsohn‘s excellent translation perfectly captures the urgency of the alarm that Pitron sounds.

After a brief introduction to the nature and numerous applications of rare metals, the first three chapters tackle pollution. Pitron surreptitiously visits major mining sites in China and Mongolia to see first-hand the destruction: the vast toxic sludge ponds that leach metals into the groundwater, the poisoned agricultural land, the villages where people suffer and die from pollution-inflicted diseases. “The Chinese people have sacrificed their environment to supply the entire planet with rare earths” (p. 28), says a Chinese rare-metal expert. And it is not just China, pollution accompanies the mining for cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, chrome in Kazakhstan, and lithium in Latin America.

“It is all too easy to forget that our online world requires a huge infrastructure of data centres, cables, satellites, etc. requiring rare metals: “[…] the age of dematerialisation is nothing more than an outright ruse“”

What makes this so shocking is that this pollution is not spoken of in the West. Pitron is intent on opening your eyes and does not mince his words. “[…] in contrast to the carbon economy, whose pollution is undeniable, the new green economy hides behind virtuous claims of responsibility for the sake of future generations” (p. 54). It is all too easy to forget that our online world requires a huge infrastructure of data centres, cables, satellites, etc. requiring rare metals: “[…] the age of dematerialisation is nothing more than an outright ruse” (p. 44). It is even worse for renewable energy: “Put simply, clean energy is a dirty affair. Yet we feign ignorance because we refuse to take stock of the end-to-end production cycle of wind turbines and solar panels” (p. 53). And then on page 72, his coup de grâce: “Concealing the dubious origins of metals in China has given green and digital technologies the shining reputation they enjoy. This could very well be the most stunning greenwashing operation in history.“

Bowyer already highlighted this hypocritical contradiction in our attitude in The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise. Pitron here calls it “delocalised pollution”. While China does “the dirty work of manufacturing green-tech components“, the West happily buys “the pristine product while flaunting its sound ecological practices” (p. 71). He reminds us that: “everything comes at a cost: the globalisation of supply chains gives us consumer goods while taking away knowledge of their origins” (p. 81). For me, this part of the book was worth the price of admission alone, and it might come as a rude but necessary awakening for some readers.

“Concealing the dubious origins of metals in China has given green and digital technologies the shining reputation they enjoy. This could very well be the most stunning greenwashing operation in history”

The next four chapters tackle the second major topic of this book: the near-monopoly China now has on the supply of many rare metals. Pitron traces the history of how Europe and the US shuttered its rare metal mines, off-shored its heavy industries, and focused on high-value manufacturing with imported components and the service economy. China used this opportunity to the fullest and has come to dominate the production of many raw materials, including the rare earth elements so critical for high-tech applications. But that is only their first step towards becoming a global powerhouse, as their 2010 rare earth export quotas made clear. Companies are of course welcome to relocate their production to China, and many have done so to remain competitive. Though the west has cried foul, Pitron avoids anti-China sentiments by providing their perspective. At a conference, a Mongolian official clarifies that “Western businesses that, like the colonisers before them, sought only to mine resources to generate added value back home are no longer welcome” (p. 110). I could not help but think: can you blame them?

Our appetite for rare metals is rapidly growing and Pitron highlights that some could run out within decades. Mention of “peak anything” easily attracts derision, but I agree with him that we are in “collective denial of resource scarcity” (p. 162). Logically, we have used up the most rewarding and easily accessible resources first, so we mine and drill in ever more extreme environments, including plans to mine asteroids and . Bonus points for Pitron for mentioning the underappreciated concept of energy returned on energy invested that Ugo Bardi highlighted in Extracted. Producing energy costs energy. As long as there is a net gain, all is well, but ore grades (the concentration of desired material) have been in decline for decades. “[…] As Bardi concludes, ‘The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity; they are limits of energy’” (p. 165).

“it is hard to argue with [Pitron’s] conclusion that “nothing will change so long as we do not experience, in our own backyards, the full cost of attaining our standard of happiness“”

Pitron’s proposed solution is unusual, but I like it. Reopen mines in the West. Not just to compete with China, but to make consumers “realise—to our horror—the true cost of our self-declared modern, connected, and green world” (p. 177). He hopes that this will finally move us to dial down our consumption. And it is hard to argue with his conclusion that “nothing will change so long as we do not experience, in our own backyards, the full cost of attaining our standard of happiness” (p. 178).

The Rare Metals War is a powerful and sobering exposé that will no doubt shatter the green dreams of many readers. However, we cannot continue to ignore the material reality that underlies the green revolution that politicians and environmental organisations want us to pursue. This book is a much-needed conversation starter.

So, how does it compare to Abraham’s The Elements of Power? I considered the former to be remarkably comprehensive: it covers pollution and China’s monopoly, and several other topics besides. And yet, its tone is more neutral and might not set alarm bells ringing. Abraham seems concerned but optimistic about the promise of green technology. Maybe it is something about the French, but Pitron is much more outspoken by calling out our collective hypocrisy in the West and suggesting we act on the root problem of overconsumption. If Abraham informs you widely, Pitron wakes you up—I found both takes on this topic very useful and recommend both books highly.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Rare Metals War

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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7-minute read

Tantalum, tellurium, indium, niobium, germanium, dysprosium, rhenium, yttrium, neodymium, titanium, lithium, tungsten, cobalt. These are but some of the many chemical elements that are collectively known as rare metals. You will probably recognize only a few of them, but trace quantities are in products and structures all around you, making things stronger, faster, and lighter. They are used to make smartphones, laptops, and fibre-optic cables; but also cars, airplanes, and military weapon systems; and even photovoltaic panels and wind turbines. We live in the Rare Metal Age, writes natural resources strategist David S. Abraham here.

I have been meaning to read this book for ages. With the recent publication of Guillaume Pitron’s The Rare Metals War, now is the right time. Thus, this is the first of a two-part review dealing with these little-known elements that have silently come to dominate our lives.

The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age, written by David S. Abraham, published by Yale University Press in June 2017 (paperback, 319 pages)

Before proceeding, about that name, rare metals. Also known as minor metals, it is a blanket term that includes rare earth elements. And though metallurgists cannot agree on a definition, the Minor Metals Trade Association currently recognizes 49 metals, encompassing pretty much everything that is not a base (e.g. iron or copper) or precious metal (e.g. gold or silver). The rarity can refer to their limited consumption (hundreds vs. millions of tons annually), but also their geological occurrence. Some are scarce, while others are plentiful but so dilute that they rarely can be mined profitably.

Nomenclature aside, there are many reasons why rare metals are exceptional, unpredictable, and troublesome. The Elements of Power explores numerous facets of our use of them, and I found this book to be remarkably balanced and comprehensive in its coverage.

First off, simply developing a mine is not straightforward. Their geology means there are only limited places where a metal can be profitably mined, allowing a few countries or companies to monopolise the world’s supply. This leads to geopolitical tensions, and when China restricted rare earth exports in 2010, it rattled industries around the world.

“Every mineral vein is different and optimising the production process can take years of trial and error.”

Furthermore, extraction and purification are expensive and “[m]any rare metals are so technically challenging for chemists to produce that it is better to think of them as chemical creations rather than geological minerals” (p. 69). Every mineral vein is different and optimising the production process can take years of trial and error. Several decades can pass between a mining company finding willing investors and producing metals. There is no cookbook you can turn to. Well, there is, but even so, a lot of knowledge is hard-earned and jealously guarded. And with rare metal specialists a dying breed due to the lack of dedicated university departments in Europe and the US, there has been a brain-drain towards Asia.

Then there is the lack of openness in the trading sector. Commodity traders are already a shady bunch, but as Abraham’s interviews with anonymous sources reveal, this sector is “a web of small companies of specialty traders“, with materials having to travel “through a murky network of traders, processors, and component manufacturers” (p. 90). There are no exchanges such as for oil with accepted benchmark prices. Business is very much about who you know—backroom deals, smuggling, and distrust are rife. “No one really knows the true size of these markets. Even the U.S. Geological Survey […] won’t hazard a guess […]” (p. 91). And given that many rare metals are recovered as by-products of other mining activities, there is no neat supply-and-demand relationship, resulting in volatile prices.

The economic side of rare metals is, in short, complex. And that is a problem, as we use much. Abraham gives numerous examples of their use in our gadgets, cars, airplanes, and weapons. The iPhone “relies on nearly half the elements on the planet” (p. 2), while “the newest weapon systems like the F-35 are flying periodic tables” (p. 168). And we will need even more in the future for green technologies: for the magnets in wind turbines and the batteries in electric cars. Once Abraham works through these examples, you realise that these technologies are anything but “green”.

“[…] we will need even more [rare metals] in the future for green technologies: for the magnets in wind turbines and the batteries in electric cars. Once Abraham works through these examples, you realise that these technologies are anything but “green””

Mining in general “[…] speeds up otherwise relatively benign natural processes that usually occur over millennia […] (p. 180). Some have even called it planetary plunder. But rare-metal mining is even more taxing on the environment. Abraham describes the different refining steps—the crushing of rock, the leaching of ores using strong acids—highlighting how energy-intensive and polluting these practices are. And in case you are wondering, recycling “[…] is not a panacea. It too has its own environmental consequences […]” (p. 177). Next to the challenges of gathering the waste and getting people to recycle rather than discard, separating complex devices back into their component elements is no less energy-intensive and polluting. An important point Abraham makes is that “the combination of metals in products like batteries and even steel are in far more complex alloys than the finite set found in nature” (p. 190). Often, whether recycling is even possible has simply not been studied yet.

If rare metals are so problematic, can we not just swap one metal for another? The answer is no, but outside material scientists, few understand the subtleties. The performance we now routinely demand from our technology is such that we cannot simply substitute one metal for another without sacrificing performance, affordability, structural integrity, or weight. And what is true of weapons, “[w]ithout some of these minor metals you would have to go back to 1960s or 1970s performance” (p. 166), holds for most applications.

“The performance we now routinely demand from our technology is such that we cannot simply substitute one metal for another without sacrificing performance, affordability, structural integrity, or weight.”

The combination of few mines, opaque and complex supply chains, and the booming demand for these metals makes for a very uncertain future that has analysts and governments concerned. Demand is likely to outstrip supply, at least in the short term: “[…] we could be condemned to a fossil fuel world, if we cannot bolster the rare metal supply lines we need to support our green technologies” (p. 136), warns Abraham. When even the former CEO of mining giant Vale is quoted as saying “[t]he reality is the planet is very small for the number of inhabitants we will see in 2025” (p. 219), I cannot help but wonder how much of this an endless rat race of techno-fixes that are doomed to fail. Nevertheless, Abraham’s envisioned solution is not to shy away from using them but to double down: “to search for more sources, use them more efficiently, and advance our knowledge of geology, metallurgy, and material science” (p. 219).

The Elements of Power tackles this topic from many angles, and Abraham is a knowledgeable guide, not least because of his insider perspective of what is happening in China and Japan. This book was everything I hoped for and provided numerous “aha” moments. If you want to better understand what the deal is with rare metals, this book comes highly recommended.

Can Pitron add to this? I will turn to The Rare Metals War next to find out, but, spoiler alert, the answer is yes. Foremost, Pitron will give you reason to pause and question the cost of the transition to green technologies.

The Elements of Power

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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This review is a case of one book leading to another. When I read Carl Benedikt Frey’s The Technology Trap, one argument he raised as to why the Industrial Revolution arrived as late as it did, was the resistance to innovation by guilds. But beyond certain vague and probably romantic notions, what do I really know about medieval guilds? And thus I found myself sitting down with The European Guilds, a hefty 645-page book by economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie, published in The Princeton Economic History of the Western World series. This meticulously argued book crushes the idea that guilds served the common good. Instead, argues Ogilvie, through their profiteering they held Europe in an economic stranglehold that lasted for centuries.

The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis, written by Sheilagh Ogilvie, published by Princeton University Press in February 2019 (hardback, 645 pages)

Two clarifications are in order before proceeding. First, Ogilvie’s definition of craft guilds. She includes not just occupational guilds (a sober reminder that once upon a time not everything was made in China and came to us on container ships), but also guilds of primary producers (e.g. farmers and miners) and the medieval service sector (e.g. porters and musicians). However, since it is such an established term in the literature, “craft guild” here encompasses all of these. With one exception. Because, second, this book follows her 2011 book Institutions and European Trade that examined merchant guilds (i.e. wholesale traders) and asked many similar questions. As guilds persisted for centuries, does that mean they were efficient institutions that benefited the economy at large or were they merely looking after the interests of their own members? As it turns out, asking these questions means unwittingly stepping into an academic turf war, as opinions are deeply divided.

The core of Ogilvie’s work revolves around two databases—one qualitative, the other quantitative—that reveal how guilds behaved. For this, she has painstakingly compiled 17,384 observations spanning over nine centuries from 995 to 1899 from historical documents, archival records, and the work of numerous historians. She then systematically interrogates these databases to provide empirical answers to a range of questions and suppositions about craft guilds: when, where, and how frequently they behaved in certain ways.

What this reveals is that guilds lobbied their governments for formal privileges expressed in ordinances, charters, and other pieces of legislation. In return, guilds assisted governments financially (e.g. by offering taxes, loans, or revenue shares) and sometimes practically by e.g. contributing manpower to armies. This widespread collusion: “[…] offered a highly effective way for two sets of powerful beneficiaries—rulers and businessmen—to redistribute larger slices of the pie to themselves […]” (p. 80).

“[…] were [guilds] efficient institutions that benefited the economy at large or were they merely looking after the interests of their own members? As it turns out, asking these questions means unwittingly stepping into an academic turf war.”

With governments willingly turning a blind eye, guilds got up to all sorts of unbelievable chicanery. They put in place entry barriers to occupations: only guild members were allowed to practise a given occupation, and guilds decided who got in. Next to charging high fees for membership and licenses to practice, there were restrictions on what you could do, and membership could be refused for any number of reasons: gender, ethnicity, age, marital status etc. Guilds manipulated markets and created artificial scarcity: they set productivity quota, limited the sizes of workshops, forbade the use of certain tools, capped wages of labourers, and set upper limits on prices paid to suppliers of raw materials. They excluded women from entering guilds or at the very least from attaining a high station—though, obviously, restrictions were “flexible” for female family members of guild masters.

But what about other benefits? Surely, guilds ensured high-quality work? Not really. Guild ordinances rarely mentioned quality regulations, barely monitored or punished poor-quality output by guild members, and readily certified substandard or counterfeit goods. Corruption was rife. Faced with high prices, consumers would frequently buy wares illegally at black markets. Then what about investment in so-called human capital by providing training through apprenticeships? Nope. Many guilds did not require them, others administered outdated examinations, passed unqualified candidates for the right bribe, exploited apprentices as cheap labour, or insisted on unreasonably long apprenticeships lasting many years. Innovation then? That question led me to this book in the first place—The Technology Trap mentioned Ogilvie’s work. Guilds vehemently resisted technological innovation and hindered the spread of knowledge, unless it happened to serve their interests.

Though I am barely scratching the surface with the above, the picture that emerges of guilds is that of intensely corrupt institutions guilty of racketeering at every turn. They served the interest of their members first and foremost, and any benefit to outsiders appears to have been entirely unintentional. As mentioned, this view is not without its detractors and Ogilvie repeatedly references the work of historians Stephan R. Epstein and Maarten Prak whose book Guilds, Innovation and the European Economy, 1400–1800 draws many contrary conclusions.

“[…] the picture that emerges of guilds is that of intensely corrupt institutions guilty of racketeering at every turn. They served the interest of their members first and foremost, and any benefit to outsiders appears to have been entirely unintentional.”

The European Guilds is meticulously documented and clearly structured. It is easy to follow her line of reasoning as Ogilvie reiterates her conclusions at the end of sections and chapters. What lends credibility to her arguments are the numerous contemporary sources she quotes. A multitude of voices from the past speaks to us through these pages, injecting much colourful historical detail into the book. It makes her analysis compulsively readable and I raced through whole sections slack-jawed at times. A few examples—some comically absurd, others horrific—should whet your appetite:

“In sixteenth-century Rome […] people paid the wine-carriers’ guild for permission to transport their own wine […]” (p. 144)

“[…] the Augsburg bookbinders’ guild backed up their expulsion of an undesired apprentice in 1760 by sending his father an anonymous letter mentioning murder […]” (p. 161)

“In 1780 […] the Rome gold-leafers’ guild tried to limit a widow to the statutory six-months’ practice, whereupon she appealed on the ground that she had conducted the craft alongside her husband for over thirty years […]” (p. 253)

“In fourteenth-century Cologne, counterfeiting the guild seal was so rife that the town council ordered the woollen-weavers’ guild to keep the sealing pliers under lock and key.” (p. 325)

“[…] in sixteenth-century Dijon […] the hatters’ guild required candidates to make a masterpiece that was fifty years out of style, so that no master even knew how to make it.” (p. 416)

“Around 1272, a Guelph called Barghesano who had been driven out of Lucca erected a water-driven twisting mill in Bologna, for which he was hanged in effigy in Lucca.” (p. 495)

Towards the end, I was left with two questions. First, how on Earth were guilds able to get away with all of this? Although Ogilvie does not dedicate a chapter to specifically answering this question, the patient reader will find plenty of examples of laws favouring guilds, and of guilds using intimidation and physical violence. It seems members of the public had little recourse to the collusion between guilds and rulers. And second, why did guilds eventually disappear? This is discussed at the end of the book, but only very briefly. The answer is still debated and involves a complex of factors, but it seems both powerbrokers and business-owners gradually turned their backs on guilds, with them being abolished at various dates in Europe. Another useful addition would have been a glossary of the many professions that have long since disappeared. Besides historians, who remembers the jobs done by coopers, draymen, furriers, turners, wire-drawers, or worsted-weavers?

Coming to this topic as an outsider I am hesitant to pick sides. However, based on my reading of this book and Frey’s The Technology Trap, the argument of guilds not being a force for the greater good seems very convincing. Especially the many contemporary sources that Ogilvie quotes here are hard to discount. Thus, this book comes highly recommended for readers interested in medieval history and specifically the history of craft guilds. However, there is so much historical detail here that general history buffs will undoubtedly find much to enjoy too.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The European Guilds

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

A pandemic is probably a good moment to understand how vaccines are developed and how they work. This short and educational primer offers relevant background information on viruses and the immune system, and goes into much more detail on vaccines than other recent introductory books. How to Make a Vaccine is written by immunologist John Rhodes who brings to the table both his background in academic research on vaccines and his experience working for GlaxoSmithKline from 2001 to 2007. His narrative approach of choice is to tell the story of viruses, immunology, and vaccines through the history of scientific discovery.

How to Make a Vaccine: An Essential Guide for COVID-19 & Beyond, written by John Rhodes, published by the University of Chicago Press in March 2021 (paperback, 184 pages)

Some of these historical episodes were by now familiar to me. For example, Charles Maitland’s first variolation experiments on prisoners, Edward Jenner’s use of cowpox vaccine to combat smallpox, and the 1950s race for a polio vaccine between Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. Or the bizarre history of the 19th-century maritime expeditions to distribute the first vaccines around the world, keeping them alive on the long journeys through a carefully orchestrated living chain of infection. Other episodes were new to me. For example that Jenner was not the first to experiment with cowpox vaccination. How Wendell Stanley first visualized viruses under an electron microscope in 1935, and how June Almeida first visualized coronaviruses in 1968.

The only place where I felt this historical approach broke down a bit was when it came to the immune system, which is a complicated topic. The components of our byzantine immune system were not necessarily discovered in a logical order, and I would have loved some illustrations here. Instead, there is a useful table on page 22 summarising the different B and T-cells and their myriad tasks. Nevertheless, I found Rhodes’s explanations of how the different components of the immune system function the clearest I have come across so far. For example, I keep confusing antibodies and antigens (I know, as a biologist I should be ashamed for having to admit this). However, when Rhodes writes “the fragments of germs (pathogens) […] soon became known as antigens” (p. 16) it finally activated a mnemonic in my head.

“[…] I found Rhodes’s explanations of how the different components of the immune system function the clearest I have come across so far.”

Chapters four and five are, to me, the core of this book and obligatory reading. I found them exceedingly useful. The first explains the six steps in vaccine development: exploratory, preclinical, phase I, II, and III trials, and regulatory review. This strict procedure ensures vaccines are safe. In part, it is a product of past errors, such as the 1955 Cutter Incident when a particular batch of polio vaccines had not been properly prepared. The only question I felt Rhodes could have asked and answered more explicitly is how COVID-19 vaccines could be developed so quickly. Many people worry that they have been rushed and might not be safe. You have to read between the lines a bit, but the answers are there. For instance, existing vaccine platforms that can quickly be repurposed, technological advances in genetic sequencing and engineering, rapid dissemination of new findings through open publishing platforms and preprint servers, and financial investment such as Operation Warp Speed in the US. Importantly, a large fraction of your population is exposed to the disease during a pandemic, which allows you to rapidly see what fraction of vaccinated people still fall ill, i.e. how effective your vaccine is. Normally, gathering enough data to draw statistically robust conclusions takes a long time, and an epidemic might burn itself out before you get a chance to do so. As a result of all this, there were 232 (!) candidate vaccines when this book went to print.

The second chapter walks you through the six established types of vaccines. All vaccines rely on exposing your immune system to an antigen to activate an immune response, but there are different approaches. Rhodes provides much more detail and for each type also gives examples of COVID-19 vaccines that are being developed. But, briefly, one way of categorising them is the non-living versus living vaccines. The former use dead viruses, parts of viruses (protein subunits), or virus-like particles, but typically need an additive, a so-called adjuvant, to elicit a sufficiently strong immune response. The latter are more potent and rely on living but weakened viruses or use a replicating or non-replicating carrier, a so-called vector, that is modified to contain fragments of a particular virus.

“Chapters four and five are, to me, the core of this book and obligatory reading. I found them exceedingly useful. The first explains the six steps in vaccine development […] The second chapter walks you through the six established types of vaccines.”

And then there are the new kids on the block, DNA and RNA vaccines, which differ in that they get straight to the heart of the matter. After all, the sole purpose of a virus is to deliver its DNA or RNA to a host cell and commandeer its machinery to produce more viruses. These vaccines achieve the same by directly administering engineered pieces of DNA or RNA that code for viral proteins. As Rhodes highlights, especially RNA vaccines hold great promise as they do not replicate, do not integrate into the host’s DNA, interact directly with the cell’s machinery without intermediate steps, and, like other RNA fragments, after a while are naturally broken down by resident housekeeping enzymes. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that are currently being rolled out to combat COVID-19 are RNA vaccines.

Finding and testing vaccines are only the first steps to getting a virus under control, so I was very pleased to get an immunologist’s perspective on the additional hurdles. This concerns practical logistical problems such as mass-producing billions of syringes and glass vials, figuring out who should be vaccinated first, and the problem of nations competing rather than collaborating to get their hands on vaccines.

“[…] I was very pleased to get an immunologist’s perspective on the additional hurdles. This concerns practical logistical problems [but] more importantly […]the vexing problem of what he understatedly calls vaccine hesitancy.”

More importantly, however, Rhodes addresses the vexing problem of what he understatedly calls vaccine hesitancy. I found his approach here admirably balanced. He gives the background to a few infamous vaccine scare stories (e.g. the Wakefield affair) while explaining some of the actual problems that can sometimes arise, and how lessons have been learned from this to design safer vaccines. Nor does he trivialize the anti-vaccination movement entirely: “Is it right to attribute all issues of vaccine refusal to superstitions, conspiracy theories, and irrationality? Of course not.” (p. 114), while highlighting more subtle reasons. At the same time, he makes the sharp observation that we need to rebalance “perceptions of individual liberty versus collective responsibility and the good of the community” (p. 116). This, I would add, is true of several other public health measures over which some vocal minority groups have been making a right kerfuffle.

How to Make a Vaccine joins several recent pocket-sized paperbacks that offer brief overviews, whether it is of viruses in general, SARS-CoV-2 in particular, or the botched response of governments. It is an especially nice complement to Chakraborty’s and Shaw’s Viruses, Pandemics, and Immunity that focused more on the immune system and only briefly covered vaccines. Helpfully, the further reading section at the back breaks down references per chapter into general and technical literature.

At a time when online searches for books on vaccines are more likely to turn up misinformation than reliable literature, How to Make a Vaccine is a required primer that demystifies concepts and gives an informative overview of how vaccines are developed and how they work. An essential guide indeed.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

How to Make a Vaccine

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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