Dust: A History and a Future of Environmental Disaster is forthcoming for Hodder in early 2023.
It's a story about the deep entanglements of people, capitalism, and the natural environment, from the earliest industrial history to the latest speculative technologies for geoengineering a cooler planet, All human history is recorded in the dust we create - and dust, in its many and varied forms, plays a vital role in Earth’s metabolism.
Press coverage and media:
The story starts in January 2016, when I started a newsletter called Disturbances, which I created to explore dust as a method for seeing the world anew – from space dust to sandstorms, the domestic to the digital. I persuaded 2,200 subscribers and some journalists that dust was interesting.
#1 Dust Is Part of the Earth's Metabolism
#2 Cosmic Dust
#3 Clean Rooms
#4 This Is How It Began
#5 Ghost Towns
#6 Black Sunday (Dust Bowl)
#7 Dust to Dust (Dust Bowl prehistory)
#8 This Fragile Crust
#9 Cryolite to Cryoconite (Greenland)
#10 Dust in the Ice (Greenland)
#11 The Ethics of Dust
#12 Anti-Modern
#13 There Will Be Dust (Dust Bowl postscript)
#14 A Speck of Dust (BBC script)
#15 The Flavour of Los Angeles
#16 Digital Dust
#17 The Price of Perfection
Subscribe to the newsletter to hear more at publication time:
It's a story about the deep entanglements of people, capitalism, and the natural environment, from the earliest industrial history to the latest speculative technologies for geoengineering a cooler planet, All human history is recorded in the dust we create - and dust, in its many and varied forms, plays a vital role in Earth’s metabolism.
Press coverage and media:
- A Speck of Dust | a programme for BBC Radio 4 Four Thought, 2017
- 2022 in books: highlights for the year ahead | Guardian, 2022
- The best science books coming your way in 2022 | New Scientist, 2022
- Hodder & Stoughton snares exploration of dust by Owens | The Bookseller, 2021
- After We Die, Our Dust Will Live Forever | featured guest on WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show, 2019
- The Blissfully Slow World of Internet Newsletters | profile in WIRED, 2016
The story starts in January 2016, when I started a newsletter called Disturbances, which I created to explore dust as a method for seeing the world anew – from space dust to sandstorms, the domestic to the digital. I persuaded 2,200 subscribers and some journalists that dust was interesting.
#1 Dust Is Part of the Earth's Metabolism
#2 Cosmic Dust
#3 Clean Rooms
#4 This Is How It Began
#5 Ghost Towns
#6 Black Sunday (Dust Bowl)
#7 Dust to Dust (Dust Bowl prehistory)
#8 This Fragile Crust
#9 Cryolite to Cryoconite (Greenland)
#10 Dust in the Ice (Greenland)
#11 The Ethics of Dust
#12 Anti-Modern
#13 There Will Be Dust (Dust Bowl postscript)
#14 A Speck of Dust (BBC script)
#15 The Flavour of Los Angeles
#16 Digital Dust
#17 The Price of Perfection
Subscribe to the newsletter to hear more at publication time: