The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

by Ainissa Ramirez

In the bestselling tradition of Stuff Matters and The Disappearing Spoon a clever and engaging look at materials, the innovations they made possible, and how these technologies changed us.

In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines eight inventions--clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips--and reveals how they shaped the human experience. Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer. She describes, among other things, how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway's writing style; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid's cameras to create passbooks to track black citizens in apartheid South Africa. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on our relationships with technologies.

Ramirez shows how materials were shaped by inventors, but also how those materials shaped culture, chronicling each invention and its consequences--intended and unintended. Filling in the gaps left by other books about technology, Ramirez showcases little-known inventors--particularly people of color and women--who had a significant impact but whose accomplishments have been hidden by mythmaking, bias, and convention. Doing so, she shows us the power of telling inclusive stories about technology. She also shows that innovation is universal--whether it's splicing beats with two turntables and a microphone or splicing genes with two test tubes and CRISPR.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Technology, Book Club, Chemistry

328 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2020

About the author

Ainissa Ramirez, PhD, loves science. When she was little, Ainissa got the idea of becoming a scientist from her favorite public television show "3-2-1 Contact." This put her on a path to get degrees in materials science from Brown and Stanford universities, and later work as a research scientist at Bell Labs and as a professor at Yale.

Ainissa not only loves science, she loves to share science with others. She has written for Forbes, Time, Science, The Atlantic, American Scientist, and Scientific American. She’s explained science on CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS. She also speaks on the topics of science and technology and gave a TED talk on the importance of STEM education. She is the author of several books, including the award-winning title “The Alchemy of Us” (MIT Press). Ainissa has a new picture book coming out in October 2025 that celebrates a hidden figure in science, "SPARK: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone" (Candlewick Press).

Reviews

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This is a difficult rating because I enjoyed everything but one thing about this book, but it s a one thing I can't quite let go of. Still, I appreciate Ramirez's point of view, her writing the book she wanted to see exist and the skill with which she explains the science housed in this book.

What I liked about this book: Ramirez starts by telling us about how science classes are built to weed students out of them. As someone with a biology degree she's doing nothing with, who dropped out of a pharmacy program, I felt that deeply. With that in mind, I dove into her book that does such an excellent job of interweaving science and stories. It's a book that explores not only how inventions affect society, but how people affect inventions. I loved that. There were a lot of connections that were interesting and that made the science feel accessible and understandable. I loved how she structured this book, each chapter having a broad concept as a title, leading the exploration to how stories of scientific advancement and the people who led them and the society who experiences them.

What I didn't like about this book: I was just a couple of chapters in when I realized that there was kind of a negative tone at the end of the chapters about how technology ultimately affects us. It's something I didn't necessarily agree with, but that would've been okay if I didn't also feel like some of the conclusions she draws weren't a natural progression of her own stories and legwork! It sometimes felt like she skips some steps or didn't consider the whole picture. The biggest bummer about it all is that she nailed it in a couple of chapters, making it even more obvious to me where she didn't stick the landing.

All said, I wouldn't discourage people from reading this. It's information that felt fun to acquire, it was interesting and it was well explained.

[da AL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, informative, & essential reading for all! The author relays such wonderful insights that aren't just the average white guy author stuff -- this book illustrates perfectly how much we miss when we don't hear from all sorts of voices.

Examples of this are her teaching us about how a saleswoman — one who sells time! — inspired Edison. How an undertaker was integral to computers. How two young black employees of Polaroid went to great lengths to discontinue how Polaroid's cameras were contributing to apartheid South Africa.

[podczytany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wzbogaciłem się o parę nowych ciekawostek. Uwielbiam takie pozycje!!!!!!!

(czytałem ją ponad rok (beka))

Ocena: 4,0.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Materials science is one of the hardest topics to make interesting, probably only beaten in the potential dullness stakes by geology, but Ainissa Ramirez achieves the near-impossible of making the subject genuinely engaging, essentially by hardly covering materials science at all, but rather telling stories of people and their inventions with a materials science context. This is the kind of book academic publishers (and even more so academic authors) rarely achieve - lyrical and quirky, jumping around rather than linear: it's got a lot going for it.

Ramirez picks out eight topics: metal springs and crystals (for timekeeping), steel (for rails), telegraph wires, photographic materials, carbon filaments (for lighting), magnetic data storage, scientific glassware and switches plus silicon for computing. Of themselves, nothing particularly new and exciting - but what's great is the way that she headlines with excellent stories, some of which I've never come across. So, for example, the metal springs chapter begins with the story Ruth Belville who used to carry Greenwich time around London on a chronometer, while the photography section combines a very familiar topic for me - Eadweard Muybridge - with stories I've never come across, such as the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement.

The writing style can be a little flowery for me sometimes, but it's always interesting. From a UK perspective, the book has a very US orientation (it could almost be the alchemy of US) - for example, Ramirez refers to 'the difference in pronunciation of aluminum [sic], where a Union Jack accent will generate Old Glory chuckles.' This isn't a pronunciation difference - the US spells aluminium wrong, according to the international chemistry body. Similarly, for example, we only get the US version of the invention of the lightbulb (no mention that Edison had to accept that Swann got there first) and in the Muybridge story, Stanford comes across as a beneficial patron, rather than someone who tried to rip Muybridge off, making him seen like a hired help, and nearly ruined his career.

One last moan - there's a very distorted version of the history of Christmas music where we are told the traditional of carolling was a response to factories being shut down for Christmas, where in reality it goes back hundreds of years further (and don't get me started on calling Jingle Bells, which wasn't even a Christmas song originally, a carol).

However, these complaints are small fry - they don't take away from the fact that this is a fascinating book that deserves to be widely read.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Total "didja know?" sort of book. Selling time, second sleep, trains and timezones and that Frederick Douglass was the most photographed man of his time.

Photography proved a hell of a chapter. I learn how Kodak blithely ignoring complaints from black mothers in the 1950s and 60s. They'd argue that Kodak colour film left their children's faces underexposed with only the eyes and teeth visible against an otherwise featureless dark shape. This would contribute to damaging stereotypes that were perpetuated for years. The thing was that Kodak's film was calibrated to perfect the portrayal of white skin. It wasn't until furniture makers and chocolatiers complained in the 70s that the formulations were recalibrated to better show off rich walnut grains and melting dark chocolate - not to mention correct their initial bias.

And the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement. Caroline Hunter and her husband both worked at Polaroid when they discovered the company's involvement with South Africa's apartheid system. Polaroid's ID-2 camera facilitated the system of passbooks that controlled the movement of black South Africans. The creation of the PRWM and her continued protests would cost Caroline her job but her efforts would eventually lead to the complete withdrawal of Polaroid from South Africa.

Not all the chapters are equally strong but it was fascinating how Ramirez chose to come at particular stories from Edison to Muybridge and broaden their scope.

[Marta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ainissa Ramirez sets out to explore how science transforms materials and in turn, how the use of such scientific discoveries transform us. She endeavours to marry science with real human stories, especially focusing on contributors who were not white males, and drawing attention to biases stemming from lack of diversity. She picks eight inventions: clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips (I copied this from the blurb). For each, she starts with an interesting human story; then describes the history of the invention and the people involved; then she closes each chapter with thoughts on how they affected our lives.

The results are mixed.

The best parts are the interesting stories and the description of each invention. A opening story of the lady who sold time as her business is particularly fun. The most interesting story of racial bias was the one about Kodak and Polaroid color films being optimized for white skin tones, and washing out dark features - a product of mixing chemicals to match reproductions of a white woman in a benchmark image. The company was unmoved by pleas of black mothers who saw their children’s features blurred in the yearbook photos. It took complaints from chocolate and furniture manufacturers to address the issue. Another interesting and little known story is how the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement has contributed to the anti-apartheid movement by boycotting Polaroid until they pulled out of apartheid South Africa. I also enjoyed the story of sending a record of humanity’s sounds into space on board of the Voyager, and how involving diverse curators resulted in a rich cover of many music traditions of the Earth.

The stories of the inventions are pretty interesting, too, drawing the inventors as humans, making mistakes, persevering, having personal faults, as an attempt to deliver the message that inventors are not superhumans, but real people, whose interest and obsession made a real impact on all of us. Edison was a genius but a jerk. The invention of Pyrex was inspired by the cake the wife of one of the researchers made. Hannibal Goodwin, the inventor of the transparent, flexible roll of celluloid film, was an episcopalian minister, who wanted to show Biblical illustrations for his students in Sunday school, and wanted pictures that survived handling by rumbunctious youngsters.

The problems with the inventions chosen is that they are rather arbitrary. Ramirez does not follow each invention from its beginning, but picks a story from the chain of inventions that interests her - thus giving a simplified, often misleading, and decidedly US-centered portrayal. For example, Goodwin did not invent photography - the first forms of photography were using daguerrotypes, later coated glass plates. The celluloid was invented by Alexander Parkes and John Wesley Hyatt. Similarly, Edison did not invent the lightbulb, but improved it. The stories are more subject to personal preference, but they are often incomplete. For example, Ramirez vexes long on the diversity of music included in the Voyager’s Golden Record of the sounds of humanity, but before I Googled it, I had no idea it also included sounds of nature, images, and greetings in 55 languages. You’d think that would have taken one sentence to mention, but it was not there.

The most questionable parts are the examination of each technology’s impact. These are utterly arbitrary and seem like special soap boxes of the author. Often she glosses over the positive impacts with general platitudes that everyone would know (such as laboratory glass is essential for scientific discovery and thus contributed to any random thing that came to her mind at the time). Then, she picks some danger this technology poses and utters subjective, poorly researched and completely unscientific oppinions. She also comes across as generally suspicious of new technologies, especially computers, smart phones and the internet. In order to make this review shorter, I will mention some of these headscratchers at the end of my review.

There are other problems, too. Ramirez uses imprecise language and undefined terms. I have the audio so I can’t quote, but I often noticed absolutes that were just not true - an insertion of “most of” would have fixed those. The editing was wanting: sentences include repetitions and vagueness. The audio edition does not help: narrator Allyson Johnson reads the text in such robotic monotone, it might as well have been read by a text-to-speech converter.

Overall, while the book has interesting tidbits, it is arbitrary, cherry-picking parts of stories, and riddled with unscientific and slightly techno-phobic opinions. I applaud Ramirez for including diverse stories and viewpoints, but by showing her bias in sampling and opinions, she fails to deliver true insight, and often misleads.

And finally, some of the headscratchers:

Electric light causes breast cancer. Seriously. Ramirez enumerates ways electric lights are bad for our sleeping patterns, thus causing numerous health issues. This is well known and fine to talk about, but singling out breast cancer, and citing that “blind women have less breast cancer”, is ridiculous. Even if this statistic is true, it us a far cry from proving anything to do with electric light, as blind women would have all light blocked out, including natural light. It probably has something to do with lifestyle differences, or sampling error. This reminds me how my statistics professor started his first lecture. He pointed to the river flowing next to the building, and said that there is a statistical correlation between the water level of the river and the number of students failing their exams. I let you figure this one out. It is about the same causation as electric light and breast cancer.

The internet makes us less smart. Hmm. Just because we can Google information that previously we used to memorize does not make us less smart. I would argue the opposite. Without having to memorize facts, we can concentrate on thinking about relationships among them. That we no longer memorize phone numbers has nothing to do with the internet, it is a function of our phones that remember contacts. This feature was available in phones even pre-internet. And what is “smart” anyway? How can we discuss a concept without defining it?

Texting makes us less social. Young people do not socialize less just because they can text. Texting is simply another social form with its own rules. What proof is there that people who text are less social then those who don’t? I would bet the other case is true - more social teens text more than withdrawn ones. Many socially awkward people, especially those on the autism spectrum, are more comfortable with texting than in-person interaction, thus opening up social avenues they can explore, instead of avoiding. And again, how do you define “social”? I would say texting skills are simply part of it.

Using the telegraph led to the differentiation of American and British English. Ramirez makes the case that the telegraph promoted brevity, which spilled into the style of news reporting and literature. This is all good, but I don’t see how that led to different spellings and pronounciations. Telegraph is used both sides of the pond, and if anything, faster communication should have resulted in convergence of language, not divergence. I think it has to do with, you know, living on different continents and developing distinct cultures.

Polaroid’s leaving of South Africa has led to the end of Apartheid. The way Ramirez tells the story, the movement that eventually forced Polaroid to withdraw from South America was the thing that started the revolution. Hmm, I am sure it contributed, inasmuch Western investment withdrew from South America, but I am pretty certain it did not start, nor had significant impact on the process. It was fought by the people of South Africa. I doubt she meant to say that the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement was more important than Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress Party, but it comes across this way, I suspect because of her notoriously vague language and the omission of context. Throughout the story, she does not mention the South African revolutionary efforts, just the Western reactions, thus providing a misleading account.

The problem is, that after detecting these errors, how can I trust her other observations? How many are lopsided, poorly researched or subjective? As a reader of a book on science, I expect a higher standard of research and writing.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

The overuse of bad similes and poorly-researched, debunked myths about technology mar this otherwise interestingly-conceived book.

Ramirez is her own worst enemy here by using “like a” over and over and over again. It’s distracting from the facts.

Notable examples taken from the book: Thomas Edison wanted to marry the technology of the telegraph with recorded sound, like chocolate and peanut butter. Or, like fireflies in a mason jar, like a bolt of lightning, like Pontius Pilate who crucified his employee. Yikes. It goes on and on.

Confusing terms like The Internet with the World Wide Web is one thing, but perpetuating the myth that Edison invented the modern light bulb goes against Ramirez' intent to personalize science - that Edison was depicted as anything other than a monopolistic litigative tyrant is to do a huge disservice to history. Young Adults (the only audience I can imagine this book is intended for) would be worse off for reading this book. I also take issue with her spending time on the myth that blue light on your phone impacts your sleeping patterns, especially since this has been debunked. Source: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover...

I suppose I was expecting this book to be a history of materials science. It most definitely is not. It's an overly flowery, simplistic and inaccurate story of some common household items and their effect on society, I guess.

Ramirez is overshadowed by better science writers (non-scientists) such as Bill Bryson or David Quammen, and definitely by her fellow Black scientists such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Dr. Clifford V. Johnson, Dr. Chris Emdin. None of these authors uses glittery similes to this degree, and the world is a better place for it.

I honestly don't know if Ramirez was told by her editor to add as many similes as she did (more cowbell!!), or if Ramirez added them all and her editor failed her, but it was grating. There was a fundamental failure in that working relationship.

Similes have their place, such as when Ramirez mentions the grooves on Edison's wax cylinder "like the stripes of a candy cane." Okay fine, it paints a visual picture, even if it's completely inaccurate (a better example would be like fibers wrapped around a loom or grooves on a record since they're much more tightly packed). But literally comparing the phonograph to chocolate and peanut butter? I don't even understand what she was going for there.

Ramirez even gets bogged down making sure you know what the color of a building or furniture is, but only fleetingly. The level of detail is wildly inconsistent from chapter to chapter.

For me, when I have trouble absorbing what an author is trying to convey because I'm getting distracted by the writing is a problem that keeps me from enjoying it. I think her heart is in the right place, but I'm not sure who exactly benefits from the writing of it.

As an audiobook, I'd like to take a special thanks-but-no-thanks to Allyson Johnson for her robotic monotone and ear-splitting s's (thanks to poor mixing) which completely undoes the humanization of science that Ramirez was going for. I'm reminded of the even-worse book "Radium Girls" which suffers from similarly bad writing and awful narration.

*sigh* hopefully I'll get to read a good book soon.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The impact of eight inventions are examined on (mostly US) society, and the author does a good job of showing how and why each invention arose and what problem it solved. these stories are fascinating and very well written and often have multicultural angles that I never knew about.

She's slightly less convincing when she attempts to show how each invention then changed us. For example, in the first section on time she discusses the way that accurate, regimented measurement of time led to change in our sleep habits from segmented sleep (where we slept for 5 hours or so, woke up in the middle of the night for an hour and then slept for another 4 to 5 hour period) to our current stay-up-late-get-up-early-for-work sleep. She uses the current prevalence of sleep disorders to suggest this change is a bad thing. But what's missing is any info or data on sleep quality in the past. there's some limited clinical evidence on segmented sleep, but do segmented sleepers have fewer or more sleep disorders than we do currently? Without information like this, the second half of the alchemy becomes less convincing.

On the whole, however, this was an engaging and interesting book.

*I was given an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago, I was fascinated by a television series entitled Connections and its host, James Burke. I was, therefore, totally interested in this book, which shows the connection between a seemingly unrelated object and the wonders that unfold after its creation.

A book to be read again, and again, and again.

Published by MIT Press, 2019

[Laura Noggle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Random and very niche at the same time; acceptably interesting yet overly simplified with subjective opinion and thus easily forgettable.

Inclusive stories about technology featuring little-known inventors—particularly people of color and women.

[Serena ♡]

it’s surprisingly hard to find women in science non-fiction (not surprisingly, actually, for loads of misogynistic reasons), but i sure am gonna enjoy this :)

[JC]

The subtitle "How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another" had me thinking this would be a book very conducive to my interest in metabolism as an analytic (Stoffwechsel is the German word Marx used, which has been translated as “material interchange” in earlier periods, before it began being translated as 'metabolism'). In this vein, Marx described the labour process in this way: “[The worker] confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces that belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature…”

I’m consequently fascinated by transformations of matter, though this book was not quite what I was expecting, and not as enjoyable as I was hoping it would be. Ramirez in some ways works through the mutual transformations between humans and matter, in ways resonant with what Marx was alluding to in the excerpt above. But I think the histories she gravitated towards tended to be biographical in nature (which I'm less likely to enjoy), and she covered subject matter that has been given significant coverage in other works of history on science and technology (in ways that I think I enjoyed more than its presentation here).

This book traces the history of clock springs and crystals (Chapter 1), steel rails (Chapter 2), iron and copper telegraph wires (Chapter 3), photographic materials (Chapter 4), carbon filaments for lighting (Chapter 5), magnetic memory storage (Chapter 6), glassware for laboratory applications and electronics (Chapter 7), and switching technologies from telephones to computer chips (Chapter 8).

I will finish with a story Ramirez tells in the photography chapter about two relentless Black workers and activists who targeted Polaroid during the heyday of anti-apartheid activism (which in many ways reminds me of Palestinian solidarity actions happening now) and their efforts over 7 years to finally get Polaroid out of South Africa (and end its technologies being used by the apartheid regime to surveil Black South Africans). The two would receive a personal thank you from Mandela afterwards. An excerpt from the section on the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement:

“On Monday morning, as Ken drove Caroline to work after picking her up from her Brookline apartment, they saw flashing lights in front of her building. The Cambridge and Polaroid Police were waiting for them. The high-alert response was partly because of the heightened state of the nation, with regular Vietnam protests and the shooting at Kent State in May. But also, their leaflets could not be ignored, using a slogan from the Black Panther movement typed in the text, and a last-minute addition scribbled on the header stating: “Polaroid imprisons black people in 60 seconds.”
Polaroid executives, like befuddled parents with defiant teenagers, eventually allowed Caroline and Ken to come to work, hoping this tantrum would go away.
Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams, calling themselves the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM), in the spirit of the civil rights strategies that Mr. Valder once discussed, officially launched their campaign with the mission of getting Polaroid out of South Africa. For these two black employees, changing the course of a company was like pushing an oil tanker with a rowboat. But Polaroid had a weakness: it was protective of its corporate image, making this a battle for public opinion. Polaroid had created an outward-facing wall; it was up to the PRWM to make it topple like the walls of Jericho.
Polaroid struck back with a memo to all employees the next day, October 6, stating they didn’t sell cameras to the South African government, with management insisting they had “no company, no investment, and no employees” in South Africa. This was true, in a way. Polaroid had a distributor in South Africa, Frank and Hirsch (Pty.) Ltd., located in ten cities, serving as Polaroid’s proxy since 1959. Polaroid had been in South Africa since 1938, benefiting from the cheap labor in the country, and had another distributor, Polarizer South Africa, selling products for them earlier. Ken and Caroline countered Polaroid’s claims with another leaflet.
Polaroid’s move was next. But Ken and Caroline, in a surprise attack, as taught by Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, amplified their efforts from paper leaflets to a political rally the following day, October 7. At noon, on the plaza of Polaroid’s headquarters at 549 Technology Square, or Tech Square, more than two hundred onlookers under the linden trees listened to Caroline Hunter, Ken Williams, and Chris Nteta, a black South African who was a Harvard Divinity School student. Earlier that day, Polaroid sent a memo to all employees, changing their tune a bit by saying that only sixty-five ID-2 cameras had been sold in South Africa since 1967, and they were used only for military purposes. Nteta, though, was living proof that Polaroid’s products were being used throughout South Africa to create passbooks, telling the crowd that Polaroid’s written statements were a “tissue of lies.”

...In a last-ditch effort to corral Caroline’s conduct, Polaroid suspended her without pay on a rainy winter day in New England, February 10, 1971. Two weeks later, on the 23rd, they fired her, since she would not budge. Although she lost her job with a steady salary of $980 a month, and had to collect unemployment at $69 a week for two years, she used every dime she had for the cause. She would buy sixteen-cent stamps to send newsletters to “right thinking” organizations, such as churches and college groups, informing them how to protest Polaroid. As she looked for work, she and Ken would leaflet “early in the morning and late at night.”
The movement gained momentum as more voices were added, and the pressure increased with more bodies. Wherever Polaroid, and Edwin Land, were located, so was the movement. When Land was invited to give a scientific keynote address in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in New York City at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 2, at the Applied Physics Society’s annual meeting, Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams were there. Invited by activist physicists, the two voiced their concerns about his technology before he took the stage. Clearly, they were getting under his skin. “The reason why I’m mad at them,” said Edwin Land, who was shaken by their presence, “is because they are interfering with my personal goals.” The next day, February 3, Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams gave presentations at the United Nations’ Special Committee on Policies of Apartheid. When Edwin Land gave a technical talk on color vision at Harvard on March 8, the Ivy League undergraduates, inspired by the PRWM, would not let him speak until he discussed people of color in South Africa first.”
The cerebral Edwin Land, who would rather be in his lab, wasn’t fond of company politics, let alone global ones. While he was undoubtedly inspired in the lab and made a whole ecosystem for innovation, his thinking about technology within society was less inspired. “You’ve got to do little experiments,” said Land, when speaking to shareholders in 1971 about Polaroid’s new plan for their continued presence in South Africa. A scientist by training, Land went on to say that “the function of the physical sciences is to teach the social sciences how to fail without a sense of guilt.” Land would eventually learn that scientists cannot separate their research from the application of their research and that the social sciences and the sciences, in general, work best in tandem, like one hand washing the other.
Seven years from the first posted leaflet, Polaroid withdrew from South Africa. The efforts of Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams ignited this revolution by being a pebble in a giant’s shoe. Universities and churches applied additional pressure, by divesting their stock holdings in the country and in the company. The final straw leading to Polaroid’s withdrawal happened in 1977, when its cameras and film were found being sold to the South African government in a circuitous way. A receipt discovered by a Frank & Hirsch employee, Indrus Nadoo, showed that unlabeled boxes of film were sent to the South African government and billed through a drugstore in Johannesburg called Muller’s Pharmacy. Film came into the country clandestinely from other countries, too. Polaroid’s departure started the process of dismantling apartheid, like a flicked domino, and Nelson Mandela would come to the United States to thank the PRWM for preventing the further capture of black South Africans.”

[Van-Anh Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humans have had a long collaborative relationship with the materials they create. From quartz clocks to steel railway rails, electric light to the internet, we may shape our technology, but our technology shapes us as well. For instance, after our Homo erectus ancestors discovered fire, they began cooking their food and spent less time chewing and digesting raw food --> This freed up their bodies' resources, which allowed their brains to grow.

Key messages in this book:

1) Improved timekeeping technology deepened our obsession with time --> time-management and productivity were enhanced.

2) The mass production of steel for railroads forever changed American culture and commerce: distance is no longer a problem and products could then be delivered to anywhere --> the expansion of US cities and the rise of consumerism.

3) Telegraph wires sped up communication, brought communities together, and shaped American English: Morse's invention of the very first electromagnetic telegraph made news move much faster than before. However, because telegraph offices could only receive one message at a time, and their transmission time was restricted, the news had to be brief and concise --> the telegraph led Americans to express themselves differently than the British. Instead of using erudite, flowery language, Americans set themselves apart with their congenial, concise style of English.

4) Photographic innovations both improved image quality and shed light on societal values and biases: By the time color film was widely used, Kodak had optimized their chemical formula for white skin. In pictures, darker skin tones appeared sickly or like black inkblots in photos --> underlying the idea that white skin was the standard of beauty.

5) Carbon filaments illuminated our world, but scientists now say we have too much light. The invention of the light bulb changed life as we know it, but it also has thrown off our chemical balance. Humans have two modes: growth mode during the day and repair mode during the night. We don't enter repair mode often enough because we experience too much of the wrong type of light at the wrong times of the day. So, we end up producing nearly twice as much growth hormone - which causes cancers, according to Thomas Wehr, scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Mental Health. --> Actionable plan: "dim evenings and bright mornings"

6) The ability to capture sound enabled us to collect and store music, and eventually, to share data about ourselves.

7) Scientific glass improved electronic technologies and expanded our understanding of the universe.

8) Computers and the internet are altering the human brain: they boosted our IQs but shortened our attention spans.

[Kelly]

A super fascinating look at the world of materials science from the perspective of a Black woman. This last part is important, since there are so few nonfiction science reads from people of color, and Ramirez explains that that was part of her impetus to write this book about her area of expertise.

Materials science is how science is shaped by humans and by turns, how it shapes us. The chapters look at a variety of inventions and where/how they've intersected with humans. Among the most interesting parts for me were the clocks, the glass, and the internet/personal computing (though at times I think it sways a little too much into nostalgia for a time before screens because "would Newton have had the internet, he wouldn't have been at the apple tree and made his discovery").

There's an annoying writing tic throughout, though, which is the need to make similes for everything. It becomes tiresome quickly, especially as those similes become more and more like they themselves need explanation, rather than serving as an explanation. Ramirez is a scientist first and writer second, sometimes forgetting her readership would understand an explanation without the "like."

A solid, worthwhile book, especially for readers who love science and how it impacts us/we impact science. It's approachable and easy to understand. The audiobook is serviceable, without anything particularly noteworthy in performance (which isn't a bad thing!).

[Fi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great materials science book. A lot of thought-provoking passages on the relationship between the material world around us and our own psychology.

Honestly, I love any book that provides me with a greater appreciation for phenomena with which I’ve grown habituated. It makes life feel more beautiful. I read once (not in this book) that the reason the past seems so much shorter than the future is because you know what “bucket” the past is in, but the future is still in a bunch of unknown “buckets”. I think sometimes it’s easy to assume you already know about all the buckets currently around you, but looking more closely inevitably spawns more buckets and makes the universe feel larger. Did that make any damn sense? Probably not. I don’t really know how to word my thoughts well. I’m kinda stupid. Ooga booga.

All I’m saying is that I really like learning. This definitely accomplished that.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ramirez focuses on the intersection of material science and society to share stories of revolutionary technological changes from both perspectives. She goes a step beyond most accounts and fleshes out the inventors in human terms, expanding on their frustrations, inspirations and darker sides. She dedicates equal time to show how these technological inventions changed the way we see ourselves and the world around us. It was particularly interesting to see her show how none of these technological innovations were neutral in their impact on society and carried costs for every improvement made. Definitely an interesting and worthwhile read.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up.

What worked for me: I loved the concept of explaining science through storytelling to bring in a human element. There were some interesting facts in here, too.

What didn’t work for me: the metaphors were painful at times, e.g. “Teal’s germanium crystals were perfect, which was unlike the response from management” (p.205) or “Like the Roman official Pontius Pilate, Shockley determined the fate of any new proposal, and he crucified Teal’s idea” (p. 203). Also there was a doomsday vibe, like everything that’s discovered or invented will be responsible for the demise of humankind.

[Barbarac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love these types of books that explain the world and it's history through science. This one was interesting but no the best. The time/clock people and the Kodak stories were fascinating but the others not as much...they were long and sometimes seem to ramble and not to come to any conclusions or a bit preachy .
Still pretty interesting book.

[Kate Hanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just fabulous book that combines STEM and history in such a compelling, personal, and relatable way. Definitely keeping this one around because one of my kids will be reading it in a class, I'm sure, and if they aren't, it will help them write an awesome report at some point.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perspective I haven't seen before

The human stories really deepened my understanding of many events in the history of materials that I thought I knew pretty well. And there are references for everything!

[Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ainissa Ramirezs ability to put you in the laboratories during the inventing of technologies is spectacular. Then to take you out and show how every minute of your life has been effected by these scientists. 10/10, should be required reading.


P. S. Should I go back to school to study material science??

[mehreen · Rating 2 out of 5]

giving us an assignment worth 20% of our grade over this snoozefest is diabolical (1.5 stars?)

[Robin Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as interesting as I'd hoped, although I learned a few things. The author, while knowing her science, is not a particularly good writer. Some of the chapters (the one on steel, for example) contained so much repetition of facts that I struggled not to skip ahead.

[Suni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of engaging and interesting tidbits of history about the materials that have shaped humanity. Very well written and researched! Easy to read as well, very engaging!

[Odo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5.0

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book does contain interesting historical anecdotes relating to various inventors and inventions, and is written in an unpretentious style, accessible for people from many academic levels and backgrounds. Ultimately, however, while I appreciated learning about "real people," and hope that it can inspire other "real people" to become scientists, it was too general as either history or science for my taste.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book with lots of stories showing man’s ingenuity and the impact of their inventions on our lives. My tiny quibble is that there is really no through line here; stories are always interesting but sometimes only tangentially related. Nonetheless.

[MIKE Watkins Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few boring/ unbalanced chapters kept this book from being a 5/5.

Pros:

1. the author breaks down every competent behind the process of every invention. You learn about elements like carbon, the iron, boron, and copper and how one person's decision to "play" with elements like these created various inventions that changed society as well as the people that live within that said society. The clock is one such example that changed the way humans sleep.

2. The author does just as good a job of describing the science stuff as she does the historic impact stuff behind each invention. I like how the author describes some negative effects behind certain inventions too. For example, cameras were at one time "racist"

" The film could not simultaneously capture both dark and light skin since an undetected bias was swirled into the film's formulation. The film was optimized for white skin. The chemicals to dutifully pick up a range of colors had long existed. But there was a secret partiality in the combination of these elements used for film's chemistries, favoring one range of color over another".

But the author also captures the positive effects certain inventions had on our society, like Steel for train tracks. "Society was swept up by the momentum propelled by trains full of Christmas trees, Christmas cards, and Christa gifts moving on the rails of steel.


Cons:

1. The author should have put images of each item/invention being described so we could visualize and understand what she was describing. Instead, all of the pictures for these various materials and inventions are located in one section later in the book.

2. Certain inventions like the phonograph had an interesting initial impact on society that I enjoyed reading about..but the author for whatever reason attempted to dive into some loose boring impact of the phonograph that didn't fit. When it comes to the phonograph the author tried to describe the impact the phonograph had on data. When really the phonograph if anything led to the invention of certain technologies that had an impact on data, so this was an off-topic boring way to approach the phonograph.

3. The last chapter "think" didn't make me well... think as the previous chapters did. It wasn't as interesting and it simply focused on an invention that just simply wasn't as impactful or interesting as the previous ones.

[read_withalaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب كان عظيم قضيت معاه وقت ممتع و استفدت طبعا من معلوماته و كواليسه و رغم إنه علمي إلا إن تقديم المعلومات فيه كان بسيط و مفيش فيه ملل إطلاقا و حبيت جدا ألبوم الصور اللي موجود في أخر الكتاب اللي كان بيجسد الأحداث بصورة جميلة و ده بعيدا عن إن السرد و اللغة كانوا قويين و ده يدل إن عملية الترجمة كانت بسيطة و تحفة و أرشحه بشدة لمحبين الكتب العلمية🤎
إنه أمر خطير لأننا ننسى كيف نكون بشرا مع بعضنا البعض "
اسم العمل : كيمياؤنا القديمة
اسم الكاتب :أينيسيا راميريز
المترجم : إسلام نبيل منسي
دار النشر :أقلام عربية للنشر و التوزيع
عدد الصفحات: 507
سنة الإصدار:2024

تأخذنا أينيسيا راميريز في جولة معها في أحد المعامل حيث كانت تقوم بتجربة نفخ الزجاج من أجل تشكيل مزهرية صغيرة و لكنها لم تكن حذرة فخرجت الأمور عن سيطرتها فتكتشف أنها شكلت الزجاج و بالتالي الزجاج شكلها ، لتأتي لها فكرة هذا الكتاب لتعرفنا كيف شكلتنا المواد !!
فأخذتنا معها في رحلة عبارة عن 8 فصول كل فصل يناقش كواليس اختراع و ابتكار معين ، اهتمت عبر الفصول و ناقشت اختراع ساعات الكوارتز و رقائق السيليكون و فتيل المصباح الكهربائي المصنوع من الكربون و القضبان الفولاذية و اختراعات أخرى تؤثر في حياتنا بشكل كبير حتى الأن .
أرادت أينيسيا أن تخبرنا أيضا أن كل شئ من حولنا مصنوع من شئ ما ، لكننا لا نعيش في عالم مادي فحسب ، بل نتراقص و نتفاعل أيضا مع هذه المواد .


رأيي الشخصي :
- الكتاب لغته كانت لغة عربية فصحى خفيفة و سلسة و كانت جيدة في تقديم المعلومات .
- الكتاب علمي يناقش مواضيع هامة و قصص علماء لم أكن أعلم عنهم و لكن استمتعت كثيرا كوني أمتلك الأن تلك المعلومات القيمة .
- رغم أن كتاب علمي و لكنه ليس من النوع الذي يصيب الملل للقارئ بل على العكس تماما الكتاب متنوع و يسرد أفكار و يروي قصص و يقدم معلومات بطرق رائعة لا تشعرك أنك تستذكر مادة علمية .
- اللغة و الترجمة كانت جيدة و كان السرد قويا لا يشوبه أي ضعف .
- الكتاب كبير و ضخم إلا أنه يوجد به حوالي مائة صفحة و أكثر شاملة للمراجع و ألبوم الصور .
- أحببت كثيرا ألبوم الصور الذي يوجد في نهاية الكتاب حيث كل صورة تجسد الحدث و يوجد أسفلها نبذة أو تعريف لها .
- قضيت وقتا ممتعا مع الكتاب و لم أكن أعتبره سوى صديق أو رواية أتشوق لأحداثها .
- أنصح به بشدة لمحبين الكتب العلمية .

اقتباس :
" على الرغم من أن العدالة قد تأتي متأخرة إلا أنها آتية في نهاية المطاف لا محالة "

تقييمي :
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

[Cynthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted to like it. the author seems interesting and i like this type of book; but she jumps around a lot and repeats information and much of the information is kind of superficial. overall i didnt trust her as a conveyor of knowledge and i didnt trust she could guide me through her complex topic.