Why have metals defined the stages of the planet and the course of mankind? Is it true that the inhabitants of the Roman Empire could have gone mad by the consumption of lead water? Is there a similarity between Game of Thrones valyirio steel swords and those made in Damascus? What was sought in alchemy and transmutation? Did you know that for the Incas gold was the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon? Where did the uranium from the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki come from? What minerals are needed to manufacture smartphones and LED displays?

These pages condens billions of years of questions, mysteries, research and studies around metals. Because, as Irene del Real, a doctor in economic geology and recognized with the award For Women in Science by UNESCO and L’Oréal, says, we tend to forget the importance they have in our history and how unimaginable our everyday life would be without them. Addressed to all audiences, All that Shines is a fascinating, shocking and highly entertaining essay: a love letter to geological processes and also a map to guide a new paradigm of environmentally and socially friendly consumption.
Why have metals defined the stages of the planet and the course of mankind? Is it true that the inhabitants of the Roman Empire could have gone mad by the consumption of lead water? Is there a similarity between Game of Thrones valyirio steel swords and those made in Damascus? What was sought in alchemy and transmutation? Did you know that for the Incas gold was the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon? Where did the uranium from the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki come from? What minerals are needed to manufacture smartphones and LED displays?

These pages condens billions of years of questions, mysteries, research and studies around metals. Because, as Irene del Real, a doctor in economic geology and recognized with the award For Women in Science by UNESCO and L’Oréal, says, we tend to forget the importance they have in our history and how unimaginable our everyday life would be without them. Addressed to all audiences, All that Shines is a fascinating, shocking and highly entertaining essay: a love letter to geological processes and also a map to guide a new paradigm of environmentally and socially friendly consumption.