In microcosm of sand, the writer-geologist conjures up the entire universe

The word “sand”, like the words “rock” and “dirt”, is a word that one acquires very early in childhood. Sand, rock, and dirt are ubiquitous materials that are the building blocks of our planet. We encounter them early in life and life requires us to know what they are.

Perhaps the most interesting of the three little ones is the sand because it is hard and yet it can flow like water, it is hard and soft and still but mobile. The encyclopedia says that sand is “a naturally occurring granular material consisting of small, dispersed rocks and mineral particles.” Even those who haven’t studied sand know that it comes in a wide variety of colors and with amazing degrees of detail, from the almost talc-powder softness of orange sand in the Sahara to the grittier varieties derived from the crushed coral reefs that dot the world’s beaches.

And now finally comes a book dedicated exclusively to sand, a fascinating and entertaining exploration of this strange corner of the mineral world. that it Sand: The Neverending Story by British geologist Michael Welland, a masterful evocation of a much-neglected but remarkable and ubiquitous base substance of our universe.

From individual grains observed in minute structural detail under a microscope to vast desert dunes that form like ocean waves over swaths of the Sahara desert visible from space, from the bottom of the world’s oceans to the landscapes of our neighbor Mars, from billions of years in the past to a future that stretches endlessly – Sand: The Neverending Story It is an amazing narrative that includes the entire universe in which we live, because practically everywhere in this universe there is this stuff, this sand, one of the most humble substances in nature, and yet it is the most powerful and most pervasive of substances.

While this is a book by a professional scientist with a Ph.D. From Cambridge, the story is told with a dramatic sense of language and narrative reminiscent of fiction and cinema. Weiland is a talented writer. sand It studies sand science, including the physics of granular materials in general, yet the focus is always on the human context of sand, and sand as a material we use every day. This, after all, is what gives sand meaning in our human world. Intertwined with tales of scientists, sculptors, and navigators, The Sands Story is at once a story of ecological construction and a tale of ecological collapse, an adventure that stretches back to our planet’s beginnings as a place for solids but one that also includes the mundane realities of a child’s backyard sandbox today. It is because sand is all around us. Sand is a component of just about everything – it made computers, buildings, window glass, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper possible, and has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and the imagination. It is composed of concrete, which is a weathered artifact. With enough time, the Rocky Mountains will turn to sand; Indeed, the Alleghenies did. Welland shows us that we can find the world in a grain of sand.

Although he is certainly a professional scientist first and foremost, there is no one more enjoyable to listen to as a writer of nonfiction narrative than Michael Weiland. He is born narrator Who could easily have become a writer of pulp fiction (or owner of a British pub!) if he had not chosen the higher calling of the study of rocks? His narrative flows with the ease and grace of some of the best works of creative non-fiction, adapting many of the storytelling techniques usually associated with novels.

His fellow scholars have recognized the power of this book. Sand: The Neverending Story He won the prestigious John Burroughs Medal in 2010 for that year’s best book on natural history (an honor Weiland shares with Rachel Carson, Joseph Wood Crutch, John McPhee, and other notables in natural history dating back to 1926).

Michael Weiland has written an exceptional, perhaps even timeless book that non-scientists can enjoy as much as professional geologists. Weiland, who spent many years practicing geology in the United States, now lives in London with his wife and family where he is Managing Director of Orogen, the geological consulting firm he founded, and a Fellow of the Geological Society.

Sand: The Neverending Story360 pages. Available in hardcover and paperbacks from University of California Press.