About book Stuff Matters: Exploring The Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World (2014)
This was an excellent, light read. Mr. Miodownik very approachably combines aspects of personal narrative, metaphysics and philosophy, and natural science. I picked up this book based on its suggested similarity to "The Disappearing Spoon", a comparison that was well justified. His chapter on paper felt more poetic than the others, but not so much that it warranted removing a star - the humanity of materials science is a recurring theme here. I will definitely be gifting this book so I can share it's author's half-a-lifetime of distilled insight in materials science.Edit:Now that I've had some time to digest the material, I want to mention a profound and hopefully lasting effect this book has had: fresh perspective. I used to enjoy city life but had grown tired of it, and was considering a move to a rural area. This book (particularly the chapter on concrete) has led me to wondering what other urban objects are made of and how the technology behind their creation is evolving. It has made me appreciate my surroundings with a fresh pair of eyes and that's invaluable. Pop science about common materials we take for granted today. I love it when authors take a seemingly simple and maybe boring topic and provide historical context to it. This is exactly what happens with this book. Miodownik starts by looking at one picture and ends up writing a whole book about steel, chocolate, glass concrete and other materials, skillfully tricking you into learning something by making it juicy and personal.
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Five stars for the high Page-to-Wow ratio. One full star for self-healing concrete alone.
—pattifig
Fascinating. Learned so much. Great book.
—journalist
