"The story of civilization from an entirely new vantage point-the six raw materials that have shaped and will continue to shape humanity's destiny. Sand, iron, salt, oil, copper and lithium: The struggle for these fundamental materials has created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and our greed for thousands of years. It is a story that is far from finished. Though we are told we now live in a weightless world of information, we...

Searching for her buried friend after the mines collapse, twelve-year-old Pakistani mica miner Nura finds herself at the Sijj Palace, a luxury hotel for the dangerous and deceitful jinn, where she must discover the truth beneath the glitter or be trapped forever.

"'Capital mediators' argues that mining engineers were the critical intermediaries responsible for integrating the transnational hard-rock mining districts of North America into the economic system of the United States. Working as labor managers and technical experts, mining engineers were involved in the daily negotiations which brought private US capital up to and across the southwestern border as part of an ongoing project of American territorial...