Another Single Commodity Book

Vince Beiser's book, The World in a Grain, is not about rice or oats … its about sand.  Kind of reminiscent of the book Salt which I loved years ago, learning lots of geography and economics of something so plain but so essential to life.  And so is sand.

Part 1 is most informative and an easy, fast read:  it relates how concrete is manufactured, as well as using sand in paving roads and making glass.  Back a couple of decades ago, the Hudson River Valley was dotted with cement and concrete plants, so many that it was a promotion for my husband to move here from Boston because he would sell more refractories.  Despite all our entertaining of plant managers, the making of cement/concrete was still a mystery to me, although I sensed something slightly afoul with the folks involved and it was not all related to the air pollution.

But reading these chapters on a lazy day on the new enclosed patio, I kept running inside to tell him that I finally understood how concrete was made and that Portland cement was not named after a city, and that one of the businesses was involved in crimes in other countries.  The chapter on roads went back to Ike and his vision of a great interstate network.  My childhood and teens coincide with the construction of the Thruway and later Northway, and especially going north, with the addition of many bedroom communities and a sense of ease and convenience to get to Saratoga and Lake George, which no longer were the destination for two week vacations, but now a Saturday afternoon jaunt.  And still feeling like a fortunate New Yorker, Beiser's chapter on glass evoked trips to Corning.

I also raced through Part 2 on silicon chips and high tech and how sand is used in fracking for oil.  I even started liking the chapters on beach erosion recalling the first hand experiences I had flying over the south shore of Long Island to see the shifting sands myself and then heading up part of the State's response to Hurricane Sandy.  Finally, I'm into Chapter 8 and my speed and enthusiasm start to slow down.  It is interesting to read the Goliath like venture to make the palm island in the Middle East but Beiser starts to introduce the overlay of oil wealth and one percenters and sand does not seem so universally common.  Building an enclave for the hyper-rich is a long way from an all-season sand box in the basement of my best friends house.

Towards the end of the book, the tone changes to one of world wide shortages, dooms day predictions and human greed.  I think the statistics and trends are self-evident and I do not like being lead by the nose into concluding that the end is near.