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    Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
    Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
    Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
    Audiobook11 hours

    Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

    Written by Siddharth Kara

    Narrated by Peter Ganim

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This program includes an author's note read by the author.

    An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all.

    Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

    Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial audiobook, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated.

    A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJan 31, 2023
    ISBN9781250882400
    Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
    Author

    Siddharth Kara

    SIDDHARTH KARA is an author, researcher, and activist on modern slavery. He is a British Academy Global Professor and an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University. Kara has authored several books and reports on slavery and child labor, and he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He has also taught courses on modern slavery at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and Cornell University. He divides his time between the U.K. and the U.S.

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    Reviews for Cobalt Red

    5/5

    62 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a book that will forever change how you move through the world. It opened my eyes to the immeasurable violence colonialism partakes in throughout the world. I am forever changed.
    • 5/5
      A must read. We all using and taking part in the tech world of today should at least know what price is paid getting our gadgets to work.
      A most important book, i recommend it highly!
    • 4/5
      Not for the faint of heart a clear-cut documentary of the human cost of the first world technology I'll never look at a Tesla the same again
    • 5/5
      A child in the Congo dies every day so we can have batteries for our phones.

      That's the story in this horrifying exposé of labor practices reminiscent of the atrocities in the Congo under Leopold II. Workers, including children, mine cobalt in impoverished and often brutal conditions—risking debilitating injuries and death.

      The author interviewed workers and families in the affected regions and tells their stories in their words. The Congo is rich in resources—but Chinese manufacturers producing goods for American companies are forcing Africans to work in subhuman conditions. The book is written in a straightforward style that makes it no less chilling.

      Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
    • 5/5
      Must read! We work in our graves, never forget the stories of those who "bake your bread"
    • 5/5
      One of the most brilliant, tragic, passionate books I have recently read. A must-read for everyone who holds a phone or uses a computer. If more of us have the knowledge, surely we can take action to help the Congo and it’s children to a better future. I cried.
    • 5/5
      The most tragic account. Not for the faint of heart, but excellent reporting on a global crisis centered in the Congo. Global supply chains link us all together, and none of us is free until all of us are free.