Modern civilization rests on six materials that most people rarely think about: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. Ed Conway, economics editor at Sky News, traces each of these substances from its geological origins through the industrial processes that transform raw earth into the infrastructure of daily life — the glass screens we stare at, the steel frames of our buildings, the lithium batteries powering the energy transition, the silicon chips running our computers. Conway travels to mines, refineries, and factories around the world to show readers what these supply chains actually look like on the ground. He visits the sand mines of North Carolina, where specific grain shapes are essential for fracking, and the copper smelters of Chile, where ore grades have declined so sharply that miners now process rock containing less metal than the dirt in an average garden. Each material tells a story about the hidden physical foundations of economic power. Salt shaped trade routes for millennia and remains essential to the chemical industry. Iron and steel enabled the industrial revolution and continue to determine which nations can build modern infrastructure. Copper wiring carries the electricity that powers everything from data centers to electric vehicles. Conway argues that the green energy transition will not reduce our dependence on raw materials but intensify it, requiring vast new quantities of lithium, copper, and rare earth elements. The book challenges the assumption that modern economies are becoming dematerialized, revealing instead how deeply our digital world depends on the extraction and transformation of physical substances.