The Elements of Power by David S Abraham: the rare metal age

Rare earths are ubiquitous in our gadgets and have transformed our lives, but sourcing them is costing the environment

Smartphones, tablets, desktop computers - ubiquitous gadgets for the digital age, they astonish us with their near omniscience and delight us with their myriad apps. But, according to David S Abraham, there's another reason we should be impressed with our devices - they are a veritable compendium of chemicals. "The iPhone itself has half the elements known to man in it," he explains down the line. "They each have the little functions that they do and without one of them the product won't work in the way that we expect it to."

Abraham should know. A natural resource strategist, he has trekked around the world, from a vast niobium mine in Brazil to an antiquated processing plant in Estonia, investigating how a bunch of exotic-sounding elements have transformed our lives. The upshot is The Elements of Power, a book that explores an epoch Abraham believes to be as profound as those born of stone, iron and bronze: the "rare metal age".