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Who cares about sand? The question of how to build a sandcastle concerned us early on. The fact that moist sand is better than dry sand is one of the first preschool experiences. Not just sand castles, almost our entire infrastructure is made of sand, reason enough to approach the topic with two books that complement each other in terms of content, both of which are well researched.
Oliver Lenzen's day job is professor of construction theory, machine elements and strength of materials at Heilbronn University and has also been rector since 2017. His heart beats for scientific topics with a focus on geosciences. He collects sand and approaches the stone world with a microscope. He has collected around 700 samples from all over the world - meticulously labeled and well organized. He shows us this unknown microcosm in fascinating microscopic images in an opulent text-illustrated book. "It's important to transform the sand into images and words." (page 14).
Vince Beiser is completely different. The award-winning journalist, who lives in Los Angeles (USA), focuses on “Sand” in the “Stuff Stories” series. Thanks to the translation by Bernhard Jendricke, Christa Prummer-Lehmair and Gerlinde Schermer-Rauwolf, the original 2018 edition, "The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization" has been available in German since 2021. The subtitle, “How a valuable resource is slipping through our fingers,” points to the economic aspect of sand. Beiser puts the omnipresence of sand in our everyday lives and the associated enormous consumption at the center of his grippingly written book: "You may not notice it, but the sand is present everywhere and has made the life that you lead possible in pretty much every minute of the day. We live it, ride on it, communicate through it, surround ourselves with it." (page 12).
There is no question that anyone who picks up Lenzen's large-format book will feel the author's passion for his subject. He approaches it with ease, but without neglecting his scientific expertise. “But it [passion] does not release us from being precise, from linking, bringing together, and from theorizing,” he writes in the introduction. Here he poses the rhetorical question of what to expect from a book about sand: "Scientific, cultural, aesthetic, astonishing or lexical?" First of all, it does all of this justice and opens up new facets of these far too little-noticed sediments (depositary rocks), even to me as a geoscientist.
Lenzen chooses a comprehensive approach for his 388-page work and begins with the chapter "On sand, cosmic sand and 'air-born beings'". Already here we meet Goethe, who already used a microscope. We find out the basics, definitions and essential parameters such as grain size, sorting, density, Mohs hardness, grain shape, degree of rounding, etc. on pages 39 to 67. Sand is defined by the grain size. A distinction is made between fine sand (grains from 0.063 millimeters to 0.2 millimeters), medium sand (0.2 to 0.63 millimeters) and coarse sand (0.63 to 2 millimeters). If you're looking for a size comparison, you could use breadcrumbs or granulated sugar. Anything coarser falls into the gravel category.
The chapter "Sand and Stones" (from page 97) describes the three rock groups: igneous rocks (solidification rocks), sedimentary rocks (depositional rocks) and metamorphic rocks (transformation rocks), which form the starting product of sand. It is created by erosion and weathering and is therefore classified as sediment. Details can be found in Chapter 4 “The cycle of rocks” and Chapter 5 “A life in cycles”. At the beginning there is a short summary that arouses curiosity. “But how do stones become sand?” This question is presented in an easy-to-understand manner using the example of a walk on the beach from page 147ff. What is important here is not only the origin (Chapter 6 “Searching for Traces”), i.e. the source rock, but also the transport and deposition environment. It makes a difference whether sand grains were transported and formed by the wind or in water.
The part “Living Sand” (Chapter 7 from page 239) is fascinating. Even though the majority of sands consist of quartz grains, sands that consist of ground organism shells should not be neglected. These limestone sands, which are often white, are particularly widespread in tropical latitudes. Mussels, snails, protozoa, corals, sea urchins, bryozoans, sponges - all finely ground - can be seen under the microscope.
Finally, “Thoughts on Sand, Time and Numbers” and “Sand and Culture” are about bridging the gap between the microcosm and the macrocosm. With Goethe we have a famous companion: "If you want to walk into infinity, only go in all directions in the finite." (page 304). From page 328 the connection to everyday life is made: "Sand is used in many industries and for a very wide range of products. […] Three quarters of all raw materials mined worldwide are sand and gravel." Finally, you will not only find an index and bibliography, but also tips on microscopic sand photography.
Beiser's book is written like a gripping, well-researched crime novel; it examines sand - often in the style of a report - from a raw material perspective. Specifically, he shows us the enormous consumption of sand that has been removed from planet Earth worldwide in the last few decades. In doing so, he adds a new dimension that has so far received far too little attention to the raw materials debate, which primarily focuses on rare earths and the associated dependence on China. Worldwide research shows how dramatic the situation is using concrete as an example. "We use sand for thousands of purposes, but what's really fueling the crisis is concrete. More sand is used to make concrete than asphalt, glass fracking and beach replenishment combined." (page 233).
Concrete, to put it bluntly, "is made by adding an 'aggregate' - sand and gravel - to the mixture of cement and water." (page 40). Cement also consists of mineral raw materials, a mixture of clay and limestone or marl, which is fired at more than 1,400 degrees Celsius. Concrete, says Beiser, "is the skeleton of the modern world, the basic framework on which so much rests." (page 39).
The book, which does not contain any illustrations, but which are not necessary given the lively language that creates many images in the mind, is divided into two parts. First, part 1 with three chapters deals with the topic "How sand created the industrial world of the 20th century".
At the beginning there is a description of the terrible catastrophic earthquake in San Franciso that shook the city on April 18, 1906 and reduced it to rubble. Only a half-finished warehouse belonging to Bekins Van & Storage, built of reinforced concrete, held up. This marks the beginning of the triumph of concrete, whose roots can be traced back to antiquity. Also worth reading is the chapter, “Paved with Good Intentions” (starting on page 57), which deals with the history of road construction in the United States. It correlates with the rise of the automobile, which made “good roads” necessary. For every kilometer of paved road, “around 2,000 tons of sand and 3,000 tons of gravel” were needed. If you extrapolate the expansion of the road network in the USA, which more than doubled from 414,069 to 839,940 kilometers between 1914 and 1926, with the consumption of raw materials, you can see how important it is to have sufficient supplies of sand and gravel.
Now for part 2: “How sand creates the globalized digital world of the 21st century”. Sand consists predominantly of quartz, SiO2, silicon dioxide, which in highly pure form forms the raw material for computer chips, fiber optic cables and other high-tech products in our society. See the chapter “High-tech and maximum purity”. Here, Beiser takes readers to Spruce Pine in North Carolina (USA), where the purest natural quartz is found. Finally, “land from human hands” should be mentioned (from page 182). The topic is the huge sand deposits in the Persian Gulf off Dubai, where artificial islands (Palm Jebel Ali, Palm Jumeirah, Palm Deira, The World) were created from sand. In total, 13,500 square kilometers of artificial land have been created on the world's coasts since 1985, most of it made of sand (page 190).
There's no question that this book is shaking things up. "It's about making a life possible for seven billion people that isn't built on sand." This concludes the book on page 274.
Conclusion: "The Big Book of Sand - Diversity in Small" is a beautifully crafted text-image homage to the microcosm of sand, which does full justice to the nature of each individual particle. “Sand – How a valuable resource slips through our fingers” focuses on a raw material that dominates our everyday lives, but is far too little known in the general consciousness and therefore provides important persuasive work. (Thomas Hofmann, July 24, 2026).