I majored in physics in college and I love to read science non fiction, but it's pretty tough to get me hooked. This read like fiction and was a total pleasure!

One of my most favourite episodes of the new Cosmos (because, honestly, they are all so good) is Episode 10: “The Electric Boy”, which focuses on the life and discoveries of Michael Faraday. In particular, the episode emphasizes how the invention of the dynamo and the electric motor spurred on a whole new technological revolution. The electric motor is just ubiquitous now, even more so than smarter digital electronics, and we take it for granted as such a basic piece of technological craft. Yet it is in fact a marvel of science and technology. With its somewhat sensationalist title, The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World—and Could Destroy It captures some of that same sense of wonder. In addition to Faraday, science journalist Alanna Mitchell takes us on a tour through history, introducing us to the people who marvelled at, experimented on, and made discoveries about electromagnetism. Thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for the e-ARC.

As the title implies, the book focuses heavily on magnetism as it relates to our physical planet. There was quite a bit more geology and geophysics in here than one might initially expect (not that that’s a bad thing). Mitchell always links each point back to the central topic: our Earth is one, giant magnet, and the strength of the magnetic field plays an important role in protecting us from solar and cosmic radiation. Historically, understanding the way the magnetic field works—how it is laid out, and how it is changing—has been important for navigation and theoretical science. Now, though, as our technology base and even things like our power grids become increasingly dependent upon electronics, understanding the Earth’s magnetic field is increasingly a matter of survival.

Reading this gave me a serious hankering to read more of Dava Sobel, and it isn’t just because Mitchell briefly relates John Harrison’s development of the marine chronometer. Like Sobel, Mitchell has the talent for breaking down complicated scientific concepts and putting them into a socio-historical context. I do so love when scientists can cross the line into writing popular science books, but even when they do, their closeness to the topic colours the way they explain it. Science communicators have such an important niche in our society: they understand the science enough to represent it truthfully, but because they haven’t devoted a lifetime to researching it actively, they have enough distance to interpret rather than explain. Mitchell comfortably covers topics like vectors, electron valences, and wave-particle duality, in a way that isn’t going to make your head spin like the very electrons she’s talking about.

One important feature of The Spinning Magnet: it doggedly rejects the Great Man approach to telling stories about scientific discovery. Oh, it spotlights certain individuals in order to point out their contributions. Bernard Brunhes figures prominently, given that he is the originator of the idea of geomagnetic reversals. Some of the more usual suspects—Galvani, Volta, Franklin, Faraday—show up as well. Yet at every step of the way, Mitchell reminds us that science is ultimately, and has always been, a collaborative effort. This was true in the past, when each person stood on the shoulders of the giants who came before. It is true now, when scientists meet regularly in conferences to discuss all the things they have discovered that make their pet theories untrue. Although I feel like I could have done without a lot of the modern-day descriptions of where and how Mitchell met with the various people she interviewed that begin most of the chapters, I will give her credit for showing us how most contemporary scientists operate within this very interconnected community.

It was also delightful to spend some more time thinking about geology and geophysics. Much like Simon Winchester’s The Map That Changed the World , The Spinning Magnet is a potent reminder of how much we can learn about the history of our planet and our universe just by examining the rocks beneath our feet. There are so many stories these stones can tell us; I am constantly surprised and stunned by how much scientists can uncover by devising new and intricate ways to interrogate and interview these otherwise silent artifacts. I’ve always stereotypically seen myself as a “space” person; I like outer space and the impersonality of physics involving inhospitable regions of the cosmos. So it’s nice to have a reminder that our own planet has secrets of the universe to unlock as well, and that we have a lot to learn from it.

In the final chapters of the book, Mitchell turns to that sensationalist question implicit in the title: could a geomagnetic reversal be in the cards for our lifetimes, and if so, does that mean The End? Fortunately, she doesn’t buy into the hype. She pursues the question with the proper amount of skepticism. She points out the real dangers, such as the damage done by more intense solar storms back in the 1990s and early 2000s. She mentions the need for us to be prepared, to consider how better to shield our technology, to take this seriously—which, indeed, it seems like many countries are. Yet she is careful not to hype up the alarmist angle.

Even though this book, really, just confirms my long-stated belief that the Sun has it out for us all!

Goodreads tells me the hardcover version of this book clocks in at 300 pages. It’s always hard to tell in ebook form (this is the first book I read, by the way, on my brand new Kindle Paperwhite, huzzah for eInk!), but The Spinning Magnet felt very long to me. Maybe it’s simply because it has so many—thirty!—chapters, even if the chapters themselves aren’t as long. Mitchell certainly tries to be comprehensive. Yet I almost found myself wishing for … I don’t know … something more, some kind of story or theme to tie together everything that she shows us, beyond her quest to learn more about the obscure Brunhes or, of course, this spectre of geomagnetic reversal.

This is a satisfying read and one I’d happily recommend to anyone interested in the topic. It’s edifying without being confusing or patronizing, and there is so much to learn in here. Sometimes it goes off on a tangent or I got a little bored (and that isn’t necessarily Mitchell’s fault). Overall, though, The Spinning Magnet is a great example of what I like to see in my popular stories of science, history, and how they come together.

Creative Commons BY-NC License

The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World--and Could Destroy It by Alanna Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Maybe this one was just up my alley in all the right ways or maybe the author is pretty spot-on with her mix of science history, humanization of the players, and just the right dose of scientific explanation for laymen.

Maybe it was both.

Regardless, I seriously enjoyed this non-fiction all about magnetism. It shouldn't come as all that much surprise that it has serious biological roots and it's all about physics and chemistry, but the author balances everything in such a way that it's always interesting. I didn't realize that magnetism was under controversy back in the days of Galileo. The way that it all ties seamlessly into geology should also be obvious, but I never felt uncomfortable in the writing. Indeed, I was pretty much uniformly fascinated.

The big zinger about the poles reversing and the effects on modern society aren't sensationalized, either. There's a big "I Don't Know" in there, but so much of the evidence points to a protracted (say a few thousand years) time of less magnetic shielding as the poles do their thing. The fact they will flip is not in doubt. The fact that we might be undergoing a radical influx of harmful radiation because the Earth isn't going to be blocking solar storms is probably the scariest thing I can imagine.

That's even worse than losing all our electronics. I mean, that's bad enough and I'll have to go buy a bedpan and a shotgun to defend myself in my new dystopian nightmare, but we're talking about a mass-extinction event. Well, assuming we or the animals don't start breeding for rad-tolerant biologies or take rad-x.

Can you imagine a bunch of teens running around with early onset dementia?

Oh, wait, yeah. I've read quite a few YA novels.

Really fascinating non-fiction, here! It's right up there with some of the very best non-technical popular science books I've read! (That's saying a bit. I like good science books. :)

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

I did this to my stubbornly nonscientific brain on purpose. Learn, brain, learn. Then again it's entirely possible I overestimated my interest in magnetism. Either way, this was a somewhat challenging read. And I admit to not reading nonfiction as much as I'd like, so I try for at least one a month. Lately, the selections seem to be positively apocalyptic, there are so many things out there that can destroy the world as we know it. Now there are deadly solar flares and magnetic reversals to add to that list. Although with modern politics being what they are who knows if anyone would ever live long enough to find out. Anyway...this book was pretty thorough, the author really did her research, so you can't help but learn things...from basic chemistry to something more complex, like the difference between ferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism, which is complicated and probably fairly irrelevant to life outside of specific fields of study. I seem to enjoy the historical aspects here more so than the actual scientific ones, so maybe I'm not exactly the target audience, but I can't help noticing how (relatively) recently some of these discoveries have been made and yet now there's nothing but certainty as to the general outline of the world's makeup. Who's to say another Einstein won't come along and change our understanding of it all? This, to me, is an exceptionally frustrating part of learning, especially science, this is why I no longer read/study so much about astronomy, too many unknowns still and too much certainty about the few things we do know. Almost like a strange arrogance born out of ignorance. Wow, this review I just one digression after another. Sorry. Back to the book...where chapter after chapter the author traverses continents (physically) and ages (metaphorically) to explain how the modern understanding of one of the four fundamental forces of the universe came to be. Compounding discoveries century after century to get to where we are now, which is to say expecting another reversal, which will most likely affect magnetic field protecting the Earth, which will most likely have disastrous effects on all/most life, which is thus far without timeline of affective solutions. After all as my favorite quote of the book states...Science is provisional. It's amazing to see how far the general understanding of this has come from Aristotle's primitive (to modern eyes) view, but who knows what the future holds, certainly bleak things it seems. The narrative was almost layman accessible with some minor exceptions. The edition I read was an ARC through Netgalley and it lacked any photos/art and also proper formatting. In fact, it was formatted in such a manner that made it difficult to read and enjoy. No idea why publishers think that's a good way to offer books, it was literally covered in random numbers interspersed throughout the text, weird level of almost but not quite right like an underbaked cookie. But this shouldn't be a thing with the proper book, when it is published. So, there you go brain, you can continue proudly consider yourself an autodidact, this was work.

With all the talk of climate change, the sixth extinction, the collision of galaxies and the death of the sun, Alanna Mitchell adds another – the fading of our magnetic field. We are protected from the sun’s ferocity by a magnetic field that comes from the core of the planet. The sun can blow it back, but it can’t blow it away. Worryingly, all is not well with that shield.

The Spinning Magnet is almost entirely history. Mitchell looks at the long list of milestones as we discovered and tried to understand electricity and magnetism. There are as many wrong turns as right ones, but today we have a good idea of what came before (though no feel for what comes next). The most important discovery was that electricity and magnetism are both manifestations of the same force. We ignore one for the other at our peril. By 1838 we knew the magnetic field came from the center of the Earth. We’ve spend the following 200 years taking measurements everywhere, all the time, to figure out the patterns, the intensity, the movements and the implications. But that’s also how we know it is fading.

The magnetic north and south poles used to reverse fairly regularly, and they leave traces when they do. There hasn’t been one since we came along, so we don’t know what to expect. But reversing the poles and the field will almost certainly wreak havoc like we’ve never seen. For one thing, we now run on electricity. When extraordinary solar flares penetrated the field in the mid 1800s, batteries powering the telegraph network all over the western world caught fire, seemingly spontaneously. Disconnecting them did not shut the system down, however. It ran on “celestial power”. Today, everything is electric. But in addition, everything runs on magnetic media. All the software, hard drives and memory banks in the world might be wiped if the magnetic field behaves badly. It could be like Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, but with no possibility of aid, as nothing would work anywhere. And that doesn’t count what it might do living beings. Birds for example, can actually see the magnetic field, and use it to navigate thousands of miles twice a year. Many insects use it too. We have no idea how they will handle a reversal. If the field doesn’t reverse but fades away, the sun will be free to fry the Earth into another Mercury, and continually bombard it with killer radiation (which is why “escaping” to Mars is no solution. Its magnetic field is long gone). It gives one pause.

Mitchell’s style is fast and spare. Her book is very easy to read. The sentences are short, direct and declarative. The chapters are short and concise. They are discrete entities, each having its own tight purpose. She avoids the worst complexities. It is page 96 before Mitchell uses the word quantum. And it only appears once more later. That’s pretty remarkable for a book on atomic structures and processes.

The irony is that our discovery of electricity, magnetism and how to employ them has allowed us to understand that life as we know it could end with the change or demise of the magnetic field and all the wonderful ways we have deployed electricity and magnetism.

David Wineberg