PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewCobalt Red takes the form of a righteous quest to expose injustice through a series of vignettes of exploitation and misery ... Many of Kara’s interviews are carried out under the gaze of armed guards and, although he describes in sharp detail the poverty and hazards faced by the miners, the limitations of his method are evident in places where the locals are flattened into brief figures of suffering ... But the strength of the book lies in how Kara... analyzes the exploitation that extracts value from the miners’ labor, then launders their tainted product into the global supply chain ... The fervor of Kara’s abolitionism contrasts with his proposal for reform, which prioritizes “accountability” from those who profit from the miners’ labor.
