RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksVince Beiser, the author of the surprisingly detailed new book The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, has delivered an inevitable warning cry to generations of citizens who historically seemed to have taken sand for granted ... Beiser never leans too heavily on what another author would presume to be the common reader’s ignorance of sand. His informal research is delivered gracefully: not in order to condescend or perpetually amuse, but to guide the reader ... The author does his best work when venturing out of the sandbox of scientific explanation and into the field of human nature. Beiser displays an attractive affinity for beginning each chapter with a glimpse into the perspectives of either a historical figure or a present-day survivor ... With these personal stories...Beiser grips the reader, while providing evidence of sand’s multilayered history ... Where the writing seems to take off and leave the mere logistics of granules and grains behind is when Beiser calls upon the tools of journalism to tell his story ... he exhibits a flair for detailing the human drama through prose.
