A review by ergative
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik

Did not finish book.

2.0

This had so much potential to be cool, but it wasted so much of that with faux-deep bullshit about philosophy of human ingenuity, and ridiculous experiments with form. The chapter on paper, for example, was a bunch of short essays about different forms of paper, which interspersed tidbits of useful information (like how Janus particles work in e-paper, and how manufacturing processes introduce acid which results in yellowing, and how lignins need to be removed before paper fibers can be extracted from trees) with a bunch of stupid meditations about how paper shopping bags make the experience of buying clothes more luxurious, or anecdotes about clogging a toilet with toilet paper. The chapter on concrete was good, and I was very touched by his slightly indignant defense of a marvelous building material that is strong and useful and flexible and wonderful, which everyone else derides as ugly. But then in a chapter on aerogel, he dismisses all the cool applications of aerogel as an insulator, and instead ends with some stupid rhapsodic wheezing about how it's a symbol of human ingenuity and should be valued for its symbolic beauty rather than its utility. (Also, that chapter simultaneously described how Monsanto bought the original patent and used it for odd purposes, like an additive in a parasite ointment for sheep, but it was so difficult and expensive to make that no one has managed to make it profitable as an insulator---so what was Monsanto doing putting it in sheep ointment?) I gave up when the chapter on plastics was formatted as a screenplay, of all ridiculous ideas. Don't waste my time, Miodownik. I'm done with you.