Saleem H. Ali is Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware and a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment. He is a member of the United Nations International Resource Panel and the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility. Ali’s books include Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life (2022).
Soil to Foil shows the profound connections between the atomic properties of aluminum and the gigantic entanglements of the world we live in via economics, politics, environmental laws, science, technology, industrial design, advertising, and more. It is one thing to simply say 'yes, we know this,' but quite another to be skillfully guided through a much deeper and ever more vital understanding of all these matters, which Ali so admirably does. -- Tyler Volk, professor emeritus, New York University, and author of <i>Quarks to Culture</i> Soil to Foil considers the 'extraction' of the chemical processes used to turn aluminum ore into usable resources, fitting within a broader turn in the social sciences to considering the socio-material and socio-technical dimensions of the world we live in. Ali persuasively shows why materiality and chemical composition matters for how aluminum 'comes to be' as a resource. -- Jessica M. Smith, Department of Engineering and Society, Colorado School of Mines