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Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles
Combining history and science, a sweeping look at the smallest substance and the biggest challenges facing people and the planet
Four-and-a-half billion years ago, Planet Earth was formed from a vast spinning nebula of cosmic dust, the detritus left over from the birth of the sun. Within the next 100 years, human life on swathes of the Earth’s surface will end in a haze of heat, drought, and, again, dust. Dust is a legacy of 20th-century progress and a profound threat to life in the 21st century. And yet dust is something we hardly ever consider—it is so small and so mundane as to be beyond the threshold of thought.
Jay Owen’s Dust sparks curiosity and corrects that oversight. This is a book on humanity, the Earth, and what we’ve done to it over the last century. It moves from the sunlit orange groves of a thirsty Los Angeles at the birth of the “automotive city,” to Oklahoma and its Dust Bowl migrants. Owens takes readers to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab where spacecraft are built in “clean rooms” and to the Aral Sea, Chernobyl, and the Greenland Ice Sheet, to help us better understand our legacy and the challenges we face in the years ahead. This is a smart, beautifully written book that builds big ideas from the smallest particles.
Four-and-a-half billion years ago, Planet Earth was formed from a vast spinning nebula of cosmic dust, the detritus left over from the birth of the sun. Within the next 100 years, human life on swathes of the Earth’s surface will end in a haze of heat, drought, and, again, dust. Dust is a legacy of 20th-century progress and a profound threat to life in the 21st century. And yet dust is something we hardly ever consider—it is so small and so mundane as to be beyond the threshold of thought.
Jay Owen’s Dust sparks curiosity and corrects that oversight. This is a book on humanity, the Earth, and what we’ve done to it over the last century. It moves from the sunlit orange groves of a thirsty Los Angeles at the birth of the “automotive city,” to Oklahoma and its Dust Bowl migrants. Owens takes readers to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab where spacecraft are built in “clean rooms” and to the Aral Sea, Chernobyl, and the Greenland Ice Sheet, to help us better understand our legacy and the challenges we face in the years ahead. This is a smart, beautifully written book that builds big ideas from the smallest particles.
400 pages, Paperback
First published August 21, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
April 3, 2024
I really wanted to like this book, but it ended up being one of the most disappointing reads I've had in a long time.
Author Jay Owens' "Dust" aims to be a book that examines the history of what is broadly known as dust, but (importantly) the kind of dust beyond the millions of dead skin cells and hair that blankets our living spaces. The inner flap of the cover implies this will be a research-based view into dust, and I was excited to see what the author had to say.
A myriad of problems plague this book. One of the most frustrating is the apparent lack of an editor or proofreader - I counted no fewer than seven instances in this book where any coherent proofreader would have been embarrassed to let slide (missing a letter in the word "so" on p.93, no space in the word "beturned" on p.94, multiple missing opening/closing quotation marks and parentheses, to name a few).
What made this book disappointing - a word I don't like to use but this time is how I actually feel about it - is how the author allowed her clear progressive-leaning political views to invalidate this publication as a full-fledged research-based piece, and instead turned it into a disagreeable blend of personal politics and legitimate research. To this end, I did not appreciate the numerous discussions on colonialism and critiques on capitalism - they did not add any substance to the researched portions of the book, and instead added an unnecessary slant to what would have otherwise have been a well-written, objective book.
A particular low point was on pages 103-104 and again on page 109, where the author quotes Karl Marx to prove her points. More such thought follows on page 141. I cannot recall the last time a well-researched, objective book used Marxist thinking in a legitimate way. Count me very skeptical that this book will change that trend (not to mention the failure of Marxism ever since it was first created, as well as its various branches, but I digress).
A few musings by the author only worsened my experience. Owens discusses "... that the High Plains is not land meant for capitalism" on p. 112, and highlights "... dust as a mode of class war" on p. 121. Again, these are things not found in an objective, research-based book, and all this did was affirm to me that the author couldn't help but insert her personal beliefs into this book.
Page 229 served as a more explicit illustration of the fact that this is a mix of opinion and fact, and made the difference between what the book was purportedly about (per the front cover flap) and what the book was actually about all the greater. It made me feel somewhat deceived; I had bought this to learn, not to read progressive pseudo-political theory.
The book does have bright spots that prevent me from rating this one star. I found the chapter about the Aral Sea particularly interesting, and Owens does an expert job at tying her travel experiences there into the overarching discussion on dust and how it relates to the Aral. There are also several points in the book where it's clear the author did her homework and provides some great research to tie into the discussion.
If the political leanings had been left out, this would have been a truly great read. But I personally cannot stand a book that deliberately and consistently mixes objective research and the author's personal biases/opinions, especially when such opinions aren't foreshadowed by the book's description. Two stars.
Author Jay Owens' "Dust" aims to be a book that examines the history of what is broadly known as dust, but (importantly) the kind of dust beyond the millions of dead skin cells and hair that blankets our living spaces. The inner flap of the cover implies this will be a research-based view into dust, and I was excited to see what the author had to say.
A myriad of problems plague this book. One of the most frustrating is the apparent lack of an editor or proofreader - I counted no fewer than seven instances in this book where any coherent proofreader would have been embarrassed to let slide (missing a letter in the word "so" on p.93, no space in the word "beturned" on p.94, multiple missing opening/closing quotation marks and parentheses, to name a few).
What made this book disappointing - a word I don't like to use but this time is how I actually feel about it - is how the author allowed her clear progressive-leaning political views to invalidate this publication as a full-fledged research-based piece, and instead turned it into a disagreeable blend of personal politics and legitimate research. To this end, I did not appreciate the numerous discussions on colonialism and critiques on capitalism - they did not add any substance to the researched portions of the book, and instead added an unnecessary slant to what would have otherwise have been a well-written, objective book.
A particular low point was on pages 103-104 and again on page 109, where the author quotes Karl Marx to prove her points. More such thought follows on page 141. I cannot recall the last time a well-researched, objective book used Marxist thinking in a legitimate way. Count me very skeptical that this book will change that trend (not to mention the failure of Marxism ever since it was first created, as well as its various branches, but I digress).
A few musings by the author only worsened my experience. Owens discusses "... that the High Plains is not land meant for capitalism" on p. 112, and highlights "... dust as a mode of class war" on p. 121. Again, these are things not found in an objective, research-based book, and all this did was affirm to me that the author couldn't help but insert her personal beliefs into this book.
Page 229 served as a more explicit illustration of the fact that this is a mix of opinion and fact, and made the difference between what the book was purportedly about (per the front cover flap) and what the book was actually about all the greater. It made me feel somewhat deceived; I had bought this to learn, not to read progressive pseudo-political theory.
The book does have bright spots that prevent me from rating this one star. I found the chapter about the Aral Sea particularly interesting, and Owens does an expert job at tying her travel experiences there into the overarching discussion on dust and how it relates to the Aral. There are also several points in the book where it's clear the author did her homework and provides some great research to tie into the discussion.
If the political leanings had been left out, this would have been a truly great read. But I personally cannot stand a book that deliberately and consistently mixes objective research and the author's personal biases/opinions, especially when such opinions aren't foreshadowed by the book's description. Two stars.
October 18, 2023
A great book that that uses dust as a medium to effectively explain how humans impact the earth through what we do. Some really thought provoking examples help us realise the consequences our selfish actions. Reassuring there is still opportunity to reverse some of the consequences through the interactions of the complex ecosystems and their feedbacks, and there are examples of recovery, but these will only work if we change.
Read
August 6, 2023A book delving into very small things as a way of thinking about the mind-breakingly huge, which might sound counterintuitive - is it really easier to grasp two incomprehensible things before breakfast than one? - but for the most part pulls it off. There is one chapter on dust in the domestic sense, a history of standards of domestic cleanliness which would be hilarious if it weren't for the countless wasted hours implicit in its account of ratcheting cleanliness standards, but for the most part the focus is wider, from the Dust Bowl to nuclear fallout to what used to be the Aral Sea. As examples, they weren't new to me, but the lens Owens brings to them, the way she yokes them together, and in most cases first-hand reportage, put them in a new light. And just as it's so easy not to notice that accumulating dust at home, so over and over again the story of dust on a macro scale is revealed as a story of denial, whether denying there's a problem (air pollution, soil exhaustion) until far too late - or simply denying the humanity of whichever luckless fuckers live in the areas that have been deemed eligible for sacrifice in the interests of particular visions of progress. Even while cataloguing what a spectacular mess we've made of the planet in so many entangled ways, Owens determinedly digs for signs of renewal, possibilities of restitution - not least in the final chapter, which circles back to LA's water wars and looks at the Herculean efforts to mitigate the damage they did to the Owens Valley (no relation). You could even infer an analogy from the fact of all those tiny particles having such enormous impacts; after all, if dust can be so small yet change so much when it works together, what might humans yet achieve? Too often, though, it seems that for all the destruction wrought by our grand efforts to order the world, declare that here shall prosper and there shall pay, only to find the dust creeping in to say otherwise, humanity responds with another grand, doomed plan. I would love to look back on this review in decades to come and be proved wrong, for the various bottom-up attempts at salvage to interlock and shore up fragments against our ruin. But mainly I just found it too perfectly apt that we're choking to death, breeding tumours, poisoning the waters, with something which was already established millennia ago as the perfect metaphor for the folly of human ambition, the inevitable annihilations of time. It may be a fucked-up world, but sometimes it's got a real knack for foreshadowing.
(Netgalley ARC)
(Netgalley ARC)
September 15, 2024
This book was awesome. I don't want to just rewrite the summary in my own words, so I'll say it does what it says it's going to do: take something you never think about (dust) and make you realize it's fascinating and deeply important.
This book also felt weirdly applicable to me, and, if you care enough to read my review of a book I read, perhaps it'll apply to you too. The book starts with a trip to California to explore Jack Parsons and the weird history of NASA and the JPL, and then continues onto California City and the Salton Sea, and later still traverses the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the weird history of William Mulholland. Well, well, well. I've been falling down online rabbit holes about those exact topics since before I even moved to southern California myself, and I re-trip down them every time I drive across the deserts for trips to Nevada or Arizona. It also discussed nuclear testing and the Aral Sea, other topics that fascinate me and I periodically find myself looking into. Not only was reading about all these topics fun and interesting, of course the notion that all these things are deeply linked to dust was a thrill. The author mentioned "disaster tourism" a few times, so perhaps I also became self-aware that this is something I'm apparently into, and I was able to live vicariously through the author exploring all these strange, blasted places.
I also want to address a few online reviews because they almost turned me off from the book, and that would have been a huge shame. I will leave them anonymous to generalize and because they aren't worth promoting. Some of the reviews imply that this book is hippy-dippy nonsense, meaning environmentalist exaggerations and/or naive marxist critiques of capitalism. These comments are childish and factually incorrect, and they reveal more about the people writing them than about the book or the author. First off, the author rightly points out that things like the Aral Sea were driven by communist powers not capitalism, so no one is blaming dust-driven disasters on capitalism. The author also points out that dust-based environmental impacts are detectable from the iron age, a fascinating anecdote that I'd never heard of and don't want to spoil, so the book is hardly a jeremiad against industrialism. If the author deserves any kind of criticism in this vein, I could imagine a critic accusing them of some romanticism of indigenous ways of life, but even then I'd push back against that. The author rightly points out that humans full-stop seriously impact the planet and generate dust, and beyond that many 'natural' (meaning independent of humans) factors like wildfires and volcanoes and meteors and solar-/planet-/orbit- based climate change impact dust and desertification. Don't let those dopes turn you off from reading this awesome book!
Again, this book was great. Fascinating stories on the causes, impacts, and importance of dust, something that's surrounding you at all times but that you've probably never thought about for even a minute.
This book also felt weirdly applicable to me, and, if you care enough to read my review of a book I read, perhaps it'll apply to you too. The book starts with a trip to California to explore Jack Parsons and the weird history of NASA and the JPL, and then continues onto California City and the Salton Sea, and later still traverses the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the weird history of William Mulholland. Well, well, well. I've been falling down online rabbit holes about those exact topics since before I even moved to southern California myself, and I re-trip down them every time I drive across the deserts for trips to Nevada or Arizona. It also discussed nuclear testing and the Aral Sea, other topics that fascinate me and I periodically find myself looking into. Not only was reading about all these topics fun and interesting, of course the notion that all these things are deeply linked to dust was a thrill. The author mentioned "disaster tourism" a few times, so perhaps I also became self-aware that this is something I'm apparently into, and I was able to live vicariously through the author exploring all these strange, blasted places.
I also want to address a few online reviews because they almost turned me off from the book, and that would have been a huge shame. I will leave them anonymous to generalize and because they aren't worth promoting. Some of the reviews imply that this book is hippy-dippy nonsense, meaning environmentalist exaggerations and/or naive marxist critiques of capitalism. These comments are childish and factually incorrect, and they reveal more about the people writing them than about the book or the author. First off, the author rightly points out that things like the Aral Sea were driven by communist powers not capitalism, so no one is blaming dust-driven disasters on capitalism. The author also points out that dust-based environmental impacts are detectable from the iron age, a fascinating anecdote that I'd never heard of and don't want to spoil, so the book is hardly a jeremiad against industrialism. If the author deserves any kind of criticism in this vein, I could imagine a critic accusing them of some romanticism of indigenous ways of life, but even then I'd push back against that. The author rightly points out that humans full-stop seriously impact the planet and generate dust, and beyond that many 'natural' (meaning independent of humans) factors like wildfires and volcanoes and meteors and solar-/planet-/orbit- based climate change impact dust and desertification. Don't let those dopes turn you off from reading this awesome book!
Again, this book was great. Fascinating stories on the causes, impacts, and importance of dust, something that's surrounding you at all times but that you've probably never thought about for even a minute.
November 20, 2023
You just never know what you might find out when you make a deep dive into something you generally barely notice and often take for granted.
Such is what Jay Owens, no doubt, learned about dust.
Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles is the fruit of such a deep dive into what proves all pervasive: the tiny particles of the world we call dust.
Most dust out there has no real human origin; it’s the result of all sorts of natural forces, and the author does spend some time discussing how such dust influences climate and weather and such things. The author’s primary focus is on the dust which is caused by human efforts: the dust in our homes, the dust created by human works of engineering, etc.
The author speaks of her experience living in London and visiting California, Greenland, New Mexico, the Panhandle of Oklahoma, and even Uzbekistan, and learning about what dust can do: the origins of industrial-scale dust, the ash of fires, the fine dust of chemicals blowing off of the dry Owens Lake bed and what was the Aral Sea, the Dust Bowl, radioactive dust, and what dust does in and to ice. She considers the “intimate dust” of the never-ending dust in our houses, the result of the slow decomposition of every item in a house, and the constant striving to remove said dust, who is supposed to do that removal, and how impossible it proves to be.
Dust might seem small and trivial, yet it proves far more important than we might imagine - to our health, to the health of our environment, and how we relate to the world. We don’t think about it, but our efforts are responsible for a good amount of it, and a lot of it in unhealthy forms. A worthy consideration of something we’d rather not consider much about.
Such is what Jay Owens, no doubt, learned about dust.
Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles is the fruit of such a deep dive into what proves all pervasive: the tiny particles of the world we call dust.
Most dust out there has no real human origin; it’s the result of all sorts of natural forces, and the author does spend some time discussing how such dust influences climate and weather and such things. The author’s primary focus is on the dust which is caused by human efforts: the dust in our homes, the dust created by human works of engineering, etc.
The author speaks of her experience living in London and visiting California, Greenland, New Mexico, the Panhandle of Oklahoma, and even Uzbekistan, and learning about what dust can do: the origins of industrial-scale dust, the ash of fires, the fine dust of chemicals blowing off of the dry Owens Lake bed and what was the Aral Sea, the Dust Bowl, radioactive dust, and what dust does in and to ice. She considers the “intimate dust” of the never-ending dust in our houses, the result of the slow decomposition of every item in a house, and the constant striving to remove said dust, who is supposed to do that removal, and how impossible it proves to be.
Dust might seem small and trivial, yet it proves far more important than we might imagine - to our health, to the health of our environment, and how we relate to the world. We don’t think about it, but our efforts are responsible for a good amount of it, and a lot of it in unhealthy forms. A worthy consideration of something we’d rather not consider much about.
October 15, 2025
a leftist book about inequitable inhalation exposures to environmental contaminants?? i read one chapter of this like a year ago for lab meeting and have come back to it on my mission to finish all my half-finished books and audiobooks. I know I am the target audience in an acutely niche way but I highly recommend. Clearly needed a better editor but well written and interesting on behalf of the author
Mostly read this in tahoe and finished at the reno airport to the intermittent (near psychological warfare tbh) noises coming from all of the slot machines on my five hour flight delay
Flagging how funny it is that all of the bad reviews for this are men mad about “bringing politics in” as if environmental science could be anything but political
Mostly read this in tahoe and finished at the reno airport to the intermittent (near psychological warfare tbh) noises coming from all of the slot machines on my five hour flight delay
Flagging how funny it is that all of the bad reviews for this are men mad about “bringing politics in” as if environmental science could be anything but political
January 10, 2024
For me, the best parts of this book were the introduction and the coda where different themes etc. were combined.
I don't normally like to comment on grammatical / punctuation errors as I understand things get missed, however at types the typos and repetition was distracting.
I don't normally like to comment on grammatical / punctuation errors as I understand things get missed, however at types the typos and repetition was distracting.
February 28, 2024
A breezy British conversation on all things dusty: from the desiccation of Owens Lake or the Great Salt Lake to the Salton Sea or the Aral Sea, from dust bunnies to radioactive fallout, from topsoil dust storms and atmospheric earth landscaping to dust aged in glaciers.
But there is often less here than meets the eyes. Owens avoids detailed descriptions of the chemical composition of specific dust particles that prove deadly for ecosystems. Instead, she offers a flood of Interesting factoids that are plucked off the web for our bemusement, offering occasional insights and gestures to popular science, amidst a continually digressing autobiographical travelogue. Mildly entertaining, often repetitive, certainly informative. Some chapters are more substantive than others, on roles dust plays, when interacting with water in global ecology, for example.
The research cited in the extensive notes is almost entirely lifted from the surfaces of the web. I found myself wondering at some points in the presentation, if an honest Chatbot with a sense of humor could have composed some of the passages in this text??😵💫
But there is often less here than meets the eyes. Owens avoids detailed descriptions of the chemical composition of specific dust particles that prove deadly for ecosystems. Instead, she offers a flood of Interesting factoids that are plucked off the web for our bemusement, offering occasional insights and gestures to popular science, amidst a continually digressing autobiographical travelogue. Mildly entertaining, often repetitive, certainly informative. Some chapters are more substantive than others, on roles dust plays, when interacting with water in global ecology, for example.
The research cited in the extensive notes is almost entirely lifted from the surfaces of the web. I found myself wondering at some points in the presentation, if an honest Chatbot with a sense of humor could have composed some of the passages in this text??😵💫
February 26, 2024
Before I read the book, someone described this book to me as a collection of essays and after reading it, I agree. With each chapter (9 in total), the author explores a different function dust has played in environmental changes and industrial development. How irrespective of what causation and resulting entity we follow, the underlying causes seem economically motivated.
I recommend the reading at least a couple of chapters of this book
I recommend the reading at least a couple of chapters of this book
June 11, 2024
Been in a bit of a reading slump recently and this took me ages to finish as a result. Overall quite a good book - I am very much in the target audience for this and am glad it exists, but it didn't impress me quite as much as I had hoped it would.
Imo the best chapters were the ones about Owens Lake ('Turn That Country Dry' and 'Payahuunadu') and the Aral Sea ('The Vanished Sea') (the parallels to the drying of Great Salt Lake were disturbing as it is very apparent that the same mistakes are being made again...), 'Cleanliness and Control', about "the intimacy of dust" and the history of modern cleanliness and housekeeping, and the self-explanatory 'Dust is Part of the Earth's Metabolism' chapter. The chapters on nuclear fallout and climate change science from the ice core record didn't really do it for me though - having some prior knowledge of those subjects, the presentation there came across as very much for a lay audience, but that's okay; if you aren't familiar with those topics it would probably be very interesting. In general a lot of good information in here!
I also completely disagree with the reviewers who were apparently displeased that this was not an "objective" research chronicle and that the author inserted her own politics into the writing. It is apparent from the inside flap and made very explicit in the introduction that the thesis of the book is that dust is an inherently political object/entity that is haunting modernity and our notions of progress. Like you must have known what you were getting into, it is not exactly subtly presented. And really, the argument she makes is very compelling: given the overwhelming body of evidence, if you come away reading this entire book disagreeing (or refusing to see/understand?) that dust is deeply entangled with colonialism, extractivism, environmental injustice, etc., then that is concerning.
Finally, I hate to do this but like other reviewers I have to comment on the absurd quantity of typos and grammatical mistakes in this book. There are honestly more that I have ever come across before (easily 20-30) and that was very distracting at times because seeing errors like this really takes you out of the moment while reading. This definitely needed another pass at proof reading and copy editing; honestly I don't see how some of these errors couldn't have been caught (was this copy edited at all?). If a new printing is made available that corrects these mistakes I will gladly buy it and increase the rating to 4 stars.
Imo the best chapters were the ones about Owens Lake ('Turn That Country Dry' and 'Payahuunadu') and the Aral Sea ('The Vanished Sea') (the parallels to the drying of Great Salt Lake were disturbing as it is very apparent that the same mistakes are being made again...), 'Cleanliness and Control', about "the intimacy of dust" and the history of modern cleanliness and housekeeping, and the self-explanatory 'Dust is Part of the Earth's Metabolism' chapter. The chapters on nuclear fallout and climate change science from the ice core record didn't really do it for me though - having some prior knowledge of those subjects, the presentation there came across as very much for a lay audience, but that's okay; if you aren't familiar with those topics it would probably be very interesting. In general a lot of good information in here!
I also completely disagree with the reviewers who were apparently displeased that this was not an "objective" research chronicle and that the author inserted her own politics into the writing. It is apparent from the inside flap and made very explicit in the introduction that the thesis of the book is that dust is an inherently political object/entity that is haunting modernity and our notions of progress. Like you must have known what you were getting into, it is not exactly subtly presented. And really, the argument she makes is very compelling: given the overwhelming body of evidence, if you come away reading this entire book disagreeing (or refusing to see/understand?) that dust is deeply entangled with colonialism, extractivism, environmental injustice, etc., then that is concerning.
Finally, I hate to do this but like other reviewers I have to comment on the absurd quantity of typos and grammatical mistakes in this book. There are honestly more that I have ever come across before (easily 20-30) and that was very distracting at times because seeing errors like this really takes you out of the moment while reading. This definitely needed another pass at proof reading and copy editing; honestly I don't see how some of these errors couldn't have been caught (was this copy edited at all?). If a new printing is made available that corrects these mistakes I will gladly buy it and increase the rating to 4 stars.
October 7, 2023
Some books shouldn't have introductions. And whilst it makes sense for Jay Owens to show her hand a bit, since she is purportedly writing a book about the importance of dust in the world, her long, rambling and self-indulgent prologue describing the wacky thought processes that brought her to write about - of all things - that most insignificant of topics: Dust - put me right off. I might have thrown the book against the wall if I hadn't already received a glowing review and it was contained within an electronic reading device. The authorial voice here I found terribly annoying.
Luckily the contents of Dust mitigate for this on the whole. So whilst I found her annoying, her little asides on the way to visit a dustbowl town in the US, or talk about the dust caused by the LA water system in the US, or the after-effects of the nuclear tests in the US, those were all fascinating subjects. But she does go hiking with her mates a lot, and they do take her to dusty places and for a book subtitled "The Modern World in a Trillion Particles" she does visit the USA a lot. Greenland gets a look in, as does a remarkably self-obsessed Fire Festival lite trip to Khazakstan, dancing in the dust. Her heart is in the right place, and the environmental conversations here are impeccable but there are moments for example in the (somewhat out of place but obligatory) conversation about vacuum cleaners, dusting and the gendering of chores which just feel holier than thou. And yet for every turn of phrase that repulsed me (my companion at the time will testify to this), there are ten interesting facts, stories, or humanisations of this story.
Dust, it turns out, is largely not even a story about dust - which is very on brand for the author. She finally shows his hand in the final chapters and it turns out to be mainly about water. I had almost finished it by then, and actually was a bit pleased she hadn't really pulled off his original wheeze at all. There is a proper book about Dust waiting to be written, and it will probably include half of this material - though perhaps with a more diverse global set of case studies. And it'll be written by someone who won't set my teeth on edge. In the meantime I am happy to recommend this, particularly if you don't mind a hate read with your fascinating facts.
Luckily the contents of Dust mitigate for this on the whole. So whilst I found her annoying, her little asides on the way to visit a dustbowl town in the US, or talk about the dust caused by the LA water system in the US, or the after-effects of the nuclear tests in the US, those were all fascinating subjects. But she does go hiking with her mates a lot, and they do take her to dusty places and for a book subtitled "The Modern World in a Trillion Particles" she does visit the USA a lot. Greenland gets a look in, as does a remarkably self-obsessed Fire Festival lite trip to Khazakstan, dancing in the dust. Her heart is in the right place, and the environmental conversations here are impeccable but there are moments for example in the (somewhat out of place but obligatory) conversation about vacuum cleaners, dusting and the gendering of chores which just feel holier than thou. And yet for every turn of phrase that repulsed me (my companion at the time will testify to this), there are ten interesting facts, stories, or humanisations of this story.
Dust, it turns out, is largely not even a story about dust - which is very on brand for the author. She finally shows his hand in the final chapters and it turns out to be mainly about water. I had almost finished it by then, and actually was a bit pleased she hadn't really pulled off his original wheeze at all. There is a proper book about Dust waiting to be written, and it will probably include half of this material - though perhaps with a more diverse global set of case studies. And it'll be written by someone who won't set my teeth on edge. In the meantime I am happy to recommend this, particularly if you don't mind a hate read with your fascinating facts.
March 17, 2024
Jay Owens's Dust sets out to illuminate the often-overlooked role of dust in our environment and, consequently, climate crises. But, the title turns misleading as the environmentalist author cannot yield to the topic's primacy and keeps veering off to ideas, views, and narratives dear to her heart. The need to connect them to "Dust" weakens those discussions, as she is forced to return to the topic that is not precisely her real love, if not the area of expertise.
Effectively the book is a wide-ranging exploration of the environmental damages wrought by humanity. The disjointed essays touch on important topics like soil erosion, expanding drylands, melting glaciers, and other critical issues facing the planet. One travels back in time and across geographies, leading to some great discussions at times. The chapter on the Dust Bowl's legacy was this reviewer's favorite. This is where the author describes the lingering devastation of the Dust Bowl, demonstrating how once-thriving farmlands can be reduced to barren wastelands.
Unfortunately, these high points only emphasize how lacking the overall scholarly analysis of dust as a singular phenomenon ends up being. Compared to how authors like Mark Kurlansky (Salt), Helen Czerski (The Blue Machine, about the oceans), or Vaclav Smil (Energy and Civilization) exhaustively chronicle the histories, compositions, cultural impacts, and future implications of their respective subjects, Owens takes a decidedly scattershot approach. Discussions about dust's origin, composition, variations across time and geography, and potential mitigation strategies are hinted at but never fully realized. This book may feel somewhat superficial for a reader seeking a comprehensive understanding of dust.
Without a doubt, the author's cries for help on critical issues like soil degradation, water scarcity, to air pollution need to be heard. Some of her views against modernity will not be agreeable to all, but they do not make the need to focus on these eco-crises and their damages any less valid.
All that said, the book is almost as if the author or the publisher wanted to graft a ubiquitous, novel subject like dust to discuss these topics in a different garb. Unfortunately, the approach does not work.
Effectively the book is a wide-ranging exploration of the environmental damages wrought by humanity. The disjointed essays touch on important topics like soil erosion, expanding drylands, melting glaciers, and other critical issues facing the planet. One travels back in time and across geographies, leading to some great discussions at times. The chapter on the Dust Bowl's legacy was this reviewer's favorite. This is where the author describes the lingering devastation of the Dust Bowl, demonstrating how once-thriving farmlands can be reduced to barren wastelands.
Unfortunately, these high points only emphasize how lacking the overall scholarly analysis of dust as a singular phenomenon ends up being. Compared to how authors like Mark Kurlansky (Salt), Helen Czerski (The Blue Machine, about the oceans), or Vaclav Smil (Energy and Civilization) exhaustively chronicle the histories, compositions, cultural impacts, and future implications of their respective subjects, Owens takes a decidedly scattershot approach. Discussions about dust's origin, composition, variations across time and geography, and potential mitigation strategies are hinted at but never fully realized. This book may feel somewhat superficial for a reader seeking a comprehensive understanding of dust.
Without a doubt, the author's cries for help on critical issues like soil degradation, water scarcity, to air pollution need to be heard. Some of her views against modernity will not be agreeable to all, but they do not make the need to focus on these eco-crises and their damages any less valid.
All that said, the book is almost as if the author or the publisher wanted to graft a ubiquitous, novel subject like dust to discuss these topics in a different garb. Unfortunately, the approach does not work.
January 22, 2024
"Every last one of us [is] enmeshed with the world from the molecular scale right on up. Dust makes the idea that we ever could be separate from the world - let alone its master - seem ridiculous and infinitely futile. We are intimately and intractably entangled - and recognizing this, finding a way to live with our inherent interdependence, will be the only way through the multiplying environmental crisis we have created."
This book is full of history and science I haven't thought about before as a way of looking at concepts that I've pondered often. I love that. Chapter topics are quite varied: the air pollution of early industrial London, LA creating a dust basin by draining a lake (and later its salvaging), the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, evolving standards of household cleanliness, drying of the Aral Sea, nuclear fallout, melting glaciers, and climate modeling. Topics discussed throughout include feminism, colonialism, and scientific vs holistic world views. It's ultimately hopeful but in a practical and realistic way rather than utopian. A bit dense at times, however, it is worth pushing through.
This book is full of history and science I haven't thought about before as a way of looking at concepts that I've pondered often. I love that. Chapter topics are quite varied: the air pollution of early industrial London, LA creating a dust basin by draining a lake (and later its salvaging), the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, evolving standards of household cleanliness, drying of the Aral Sea, nuclear fallout, melting glaciers, and climate modeling. Topics discussed throughout include feminism, colonialism, and scientific vs holistic world views. It's ultimately hopeful but in a practical and realistic way rather than utopian. A bit dense at times, however, it is worth pushing through.
February 14, 2024
I WANTED to enjoy this book, but it is far too political and somewhat "lecturing".
"Colonial" appears something like two dozen times?
"indigenous" nearly three dozen times?
"Settler" just over a dozen times?
"The settlers turned their stolen land to profit. " - Yes, adding statements like this is relevant to a book on "Dust"??
The author is from the UK and I read the UK version.. OMG the amount of times she mixes her units, just look at the chapter on "Fallout":
"Project how he and two or three hundred other men and women were instructed to stand in a twelve-foot-deep trench, bend over and cover their faces with their hands – as a 17-kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated seemingly only 5,000 feet away."
..."radioactive dust and fallout travelled sixty kilometers"
At the start of the book, she was decent and able to supply both Metric and Imperial units, but this stopped later on??
"He envisaged the aqueduct carrying 500 cubic feet per second (14 m3/s) "
Started off interesting in the first chapter, until the political pandering started... I jumped around reading what I wanted and skipping her social commentary.
"Colonial" appears something like two dozen times?
"indigenous" nearly three dozen times?
"Settler" just over a dozen times?
"The settlers turned their stolen land to profit. " - Yes, adding statements like this is relevant to a book on "Dust"??
The author is from the UK and I read the UK version.. OMG the amount of times she mixes her units, just look at the chapter on "Fallout":
"Project how he and two or three hundred other men and women were instructed to stand in a twelve-foot-deep trench, bend over and cover their faces with their hands – as a 17-kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated seemingly only 5,000 feet away."
..."radioactive dust and fallout travelled sixty kilometers"
At the start of the book, she was decent and able to supply both Metric and Imperial units, but this stopped later on??
"He envisaged the aqueduct carrying 500 cubic feet per second (14 m3/s) "
Started off interesting in the first chapter, until the political pandering started... I jumped around reading what I wanted and skipping her social commentary.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 13, 2023
This book explores the outsized impact of tiny particles. It reveals how dust has shaped history, from the Dust Bowl to climate change and nuclear fallout. Offering insight into this overlooked threat, the book traces dust's origins on Earth and its profound yet underappreciated role across science, the environment, and human events.
This is a fascinating, beautifully written, and compassionate call to action to prevent human-created desertification. The book shows how fragile and interrelated systems are being undermined, and once they're disrupted, it may be impossible to restore them. Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea has all but disappeared during my lifetime. The Great Salt Lake is drying up, increasing its mineral concentration, creating a human and wildlife disaster in the making. The management of Owens Lake offers a glimmer of hope if we reverse course now.
The audiobook narration was well done and added to the enjoyment of the book.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
This is a fascinating, beautifully written, and compassionate call to action to prevent human-created desertification. The book shows how fragile and interrelated systems are being undermined, and once they're disrupted, it may be impossible to restore them. Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea has all but disappeared during my lifetime. The Great Salt Lake is drying up, increasing its mineral concentration, creating a human and wildlife disaster in the making. The management of Owens Lake offers a glimmer of hope if we reverse course now.
The audiobook narration was well done and added to the enjoyment of the book.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
December 20, 2025
I never expected a book called Dust to change the way I look at the world, but it did. I always thought of dust as something we clean and forget, but this book shows how these tiny particles influence everything from ecosystems to climate to human history.
Take Owens Lake in California. A diverted water supply turned it into one of the worst dust pollution zones in the US. I drove through that area years ago, and now I want to go back with this new perspective. Or the fact that Saharan dust travels across the Atlantic to feed the Amazon rainforest. Or that dark dust settling on glaciers speeds up ice melt. There are benefits and consequences hidden in something we never think about.
Dust is small and often invisible, yet its ripple effects are massive. It made me wonder what else is out there that we overlook but that still shapes our lives in meaningful ways.
Take Owens Lake in California. A diverted water supply turned it into one of the worst dust pollution zones in the US. I drove through that area years ago, and now I want to go back with this new perspective. Or the fact that Saharan dust travels across the Atlantic to feed the Amazon rainforest. Or that dark dust settling on glaciers speeds up ice melt. There are benefits and consequences hidden in something we never think about.
Dust is small and often invisible, yet its ripple effects are massive. It made me wonder what else is out there that we overlook but that still shapes our lives in meaningful ways.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 28, 2023
Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles is part science book and part history book, melding the two to look at how humans have shaped dust in this world and how dust has changed us. This was a fascinating look into something few of us think about in any kind of detail. The only thing that bothered me was that the audiobook had British pronunciations – to be expected with a British author and British narrator – but some of the scientific terms are pronounced differently, and I would lose track of the story when I heard one of the words “mispronounced” to my ear. That is a personal nitpick, though, and it shouldn’t stop you from checking out this book in your preferred format.
Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an audio ARC of this book.
Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an audio ARC of this book.
April 19, 2024
When I saw this for download on Netgalley it drew my immediate interest. I just had to see how there was so much to talk about when it came to dust. It’s one of the most innocuous parts of our lives. It’s everywhere but most people barely notice it. I’m glad I got approved for a copy of this when I did.
I absolutely loved this book. The depth of detail that is gone into is just amazing. I learned so many things that I didn’t know before. The chapter about radioactive dust was especially eye opening. And I had no idea that Los Angeles had such a nefarious history.
My only complaints are about the audiobook. The narrator mispronounced multiple words (and I don’t just mean using the British pronunciation I mean they flat out said words wrong).
Overall I greatly enjoyed this, highly recommend for nonfiction/history fans, and look forward to reading more from the author in the future.
I absolutely loved this book. The depth of detail that is gone into is just amazing. I learned so many things that I didn’t know before. The chapter about radioactive dust was especially eye opening. And I had no idea that Los Angeles had such a nefarious history.
My only complaints are about the audiobook. The narrator mispronounced multiple words (and I don’t just mean using the British pronunciation I mean they flat out said words wrong).
Overall I greatly enjoyed this, highly recommend for nonfiction/history fans, and look forward to reading more from the author in the future.
November 19, 2023
Wow! Who knew that a book about dust would be so engrossing! I do love nonfiction books that take a deep dive into something I previously thought was mundane, but turns out to be fascinating. I guess many things are fascinating if you take the time to go beyond the surface.
This book takes you on a journey to learn about all kinds of dust from the dust in your house (not mostly dead skin cells btw) to nuclear bomb testing to the ice sheets of Greenland highlighting the important role that dust plays. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!
Thank you to Netgalley and RB Media for an advance copy of this book for review.
This book takes you on a journey to learn about all kinds of dust from the dust in your house (not mostly dead skin cells btw) to nuclear bomb testing to the ice sheets of Greenland highlighting the important role that dust plays. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!
Thank you to Netgalley and RB Media for an advance copy of this book for review.
December 17, 2023
What a pleasure it was to read it. If I have to choose my favorites chapters that will be the one about Aral sea and the one about the place of dust in Earth’s metabolism. It’s one of those books that I will continue to think about long after I finish it. It will stay with me because of the complexity of the subject but also because also it can kind of go against my own tendency of solutionism and techno-optimism. The explanations are very clear, with enough scientific terms to understand without being too hard to follow. The other thing is the right balance between exposing the problems of the human interventions without falling into the nostalgic bias we can have about nature and also calling out technocratic mitigation solutions. Definitely recommended !
February 18, 2024
I was expecting a pop science book in the vein of "how herring explain the world," but this book is actually a really interesting look at human culture and how human decisions (and quite often impersonal capitalistic greed) lead to environmental degradation, misery, and way too much housework. The sections on LA's water impact on the Owens Valley, British class anxiety around housework and the crushing impact they had on women; the dust bowl; and the disappearing Aral Sea were, while disparate in topic, all really fascinating and drew together the larger themes. Really interesting book.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
December 24, 2024
Loved the concept, but not the execution. I think I’m just too close to the source material, so would recommend for a more general audience.
Two things really got me: first, there are sections of the book that felt more like virtue signaling than actual analysis… the cleanliness and control chapter left a lot to be desired. Second, there are some places where the author just gets the science wrong. Notably, the importance of black carbon as a climate forcer is repeatedly overstated. It brings the movement down!
Two things really got me: first, there are sections of the book that felt more like virtue signaling than actual analysis… the cleanliness and control chapter left a lot to be desired. Second, there are some places where the author just gets the science wrong. Notably, the importance of black carbon as a climate forcer is repeatedly overstated. It brings the movement down!
July 25, 2025
I love jumping into a book on a totally random topic and seeing what journey it takes me on. This book had that feeling of a journey across continents and into unknown territory. The ways the US government has treated rural and native people as expendable made me very angry, though not surprised. I was disappointed that Owens didn't go more into the desertification caused by grazing animals. It seems a huge oversight not to go into how the Sahara desert was manmade through overgrazing cattle on the land; It would have gone so well with her theme of dust being a manmade.
October 23, 2023
This ran Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain close as Auraist's pick for September's most stylishly written nonfiction release. Still highly recommended, though, for the quality of prose. https://auraist.substack.com/p/nonfic...
January 15, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and Recorded Books for the audiobook ARC!
Dust is a comprehensive look at one of the most ubiquitous and least studied substances on earth. Though to even call it a substance is already a betrayal of all the things I learned from this book. More like 'substance soup.'
If you ever wanted to learn more about the historical significance of dust, or just what it is that is everywhere and builds up faster than you would believe, this is the book for you!
Dust is a comprehensive look at one of the most ubiquitous and least studied substances on earth. Though to even call it a substance is already a betrayal of all the things I learned from this book. More like 'substance soup.'
If you ever wanted to learn more about the historical significance of dust, or just what it is that is everywhere and builds up faster than you would believe, this is the book for you!
August 16, 2025
The idea behind this book is a noble feat, however, it’s written in a haphazard way that lacks focus and includes a plethora of unnecessary tangents. It’s also clear that when the topics turn political that the author lacks a clear understanding of their role and entitlement in the world. Often failing to address their position but making blankety statements of what ought to be. Learned far less than I was hoping to and am overall disappointed with this book.
November 25, 2025
Dust is one of those books that made me think about the world in a different way -- which is wonderful. I knew of the stories of Owens Lak and the Aral Sea and using ice cores to assess natural and manmade phenomema but her easy style of writing and delivery of the history of dust made it not the mundane thing that most people consign it to. A definite 5-star read for those trying to understand our ever more complicated and changing world.
September 21, 2023
It's fascinating as dust can be the one we clean in our homes, it can be caused by an atomic explosion or the rest of the big bang.
An informative and fascinating book, a book about the universe and the very smaill.
I liked the stile of writing and the storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine
An informative and fascinating book, a book about the universe and the very smaill.
I liked the stile of writing and the storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine
December 25, 2024
the first chapter was super interesting so I borrowed the book. But as it progressed I realised it wasn't what I was looking for.
Would have wished the rest of the book followed on the style of the first chapter and just spoke about dust on a metaphorical abstract level and with a heavy personal subjective take.
Would have wished the rest of the book followed on the style of the first chapter and just spoke about dust on a metaphorical abstract level and with a heavy personal subjective take.
December 30, 2023
A book for our age
As 'Silent Spring' was a wakening to environmental problems in the 1960's , Owen's dust is a timely reminder to the accelerating environmental problems of our time. Read it!
As 'Silent Spring' was a wakening to environmental problems in the 1960's , Owen's dust is a timely reminder to the accelerating environmental problems of our time. Read it!
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