The Alchemy of Us, Ainissa Ramirez
The Alchemy of Us, Ainissa Ramirez
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The Alchemy of Us
How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

Author: Ainissa Ramirez

Narrator: Allyson Johnson

Unabridged: 7 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 04/07/2020


Synopsis

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; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid's cameras to create passbooks to track black citizens in apartheid South Africa.

Ramirez shows not only 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 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by da

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 — o......more

Goodreads review by Brian

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......more

Goodreads review by David

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 K......more

Goodreads review by Marta

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 f......more