Vince’s first book, The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, was was a finalist for a PEN/E.O. Wilson Award and a California Book Award, and has been translated into five languages. Wired magazine editor-in-chief Nick Thompson calls it “a riveting, wonderfully written investigation.” Senator John McCain called Vince’s coverage of the issue “a must-read.”
It is available in hardback, paperback, audio, and digital versions on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever else books are sold.
Some reviews:
“Impassioned and alarming.” The Washington Post
“Stunning.” NPR
“The World in a Grain is nothing less than one of the best reporters working today unpacking the literal foundations of civilization. Everything we are, everywhere we live, is built on or out of sand, and Vince Beiser tells the best story of where that sand comes from, who moves it, and what they build from it. It’s a whole new way of seeing the world.” —Adam Rogers, author of Proof: The Science of Booze
“I thought I knew the basics of sustainability, but this lucid, eye-opening book made me feel like a dolt in the best possible aha-moment way: I’d simply never registered how much of the contemporary world—our concrete and glass buildings and asphalt roads and silicone-based digital devices and so much more—is entirely, voraciously sand-dependent. And the looming global sand crisis: who knew?” —Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
“Sand shortage? Black market in sand? Secret sand heists? Who knew? I certainly didn’t before reading this lively and eye-opening book about a material I’d always assumed almost infinite. Vince Beiser shows, with great skill, that this key component of our fragile, over-consuming planet we need to better understand, conserve and protect.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains
In addition, many of Vince’s magazine articles have been reprinted in anthologies and text books published by Oxford University Press, McGraw-Hill, Greenhaven Press, Wadsworth and others.
His literary agent is Lisa Bankoff of Lisa Bankoff Collaborative LLC.
