Real People/Real Stories – A Nonfiction Book Group: “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives” by Siddharth Kara (WL)

Real People/Real Stories meets the third Thursday of each month to explore the best in nonfiction history, biography, science, nature, and the arts. This month’s title is Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara.

Lithium batteries power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often in sub-human conditions, by impoverished adults and children. 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.

Harrowing…a righteous quest to expose injustice.” ― The New York Times Book Review “Powerful…heart-wrenching…compelling.” ― The Wall Street Journal

“With extraordinary tenacity and compassion, Siddharth Kara evokes one of the most dramatic divides between wealth and poverty in the world today. His reporting on how the dangerous, ill-paid labor of Congo children provides a mineral essential to our cellphones will break your heart. I hope policy-makers on every continent will read this book.” ― Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost

“Siddharth Kara’s powerfully told and meticulously researched book exposes the dirty secret that much of our ‘clean’ energy is powered by the violent exploitation, and blood, of children in the Congo. He makes a compelling case for the urgent need to address this modern form of slavery. ” ― Nick Grono, CEO, Freedom Fund