Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

by Mark Miodownik

Philip Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, Vintage (2008). Rodney Cotterill, The Material World, CUP (2008). Michael Faraday, The Chemical History of a Candle, OUP Oxford (2011). Stephen Fenichell, Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century, HarperCollins (1996). Adrian Forty, Concrete Culture: A Material History, Reaktion Books (2012). J. E. Gordon, New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don’t Fall Through the Floor, Penguin (1991). ———, Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down, Penguin (1978). Philip Howes and Zoe Laughlin, Material Matters: New Materials in Design, Black Dog Publishing (2012). Chris Lefteri, Materials for Inspirational Design, Rotovision (2006). Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, Penguin, new edition (2000). Gerry Martin and Alan Macfarlane, The Glass Bathyscape: How Glass Changed the World, Profile Books (2002). Harold McGee, McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture, Hodder & Stoughton (2004). Matilda McQuaid, Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, Princeton Architectural Press (2005).