A Little Context

I have inherited this beautiful book from my mother. It's about three inches thick, a foot wide and a foot and a half high; bound in some ivory-toned leather-like stuff, with the kind of pages that you have to cut apart with a knife before you read it -- though the pages of our copy had already been cut by the time the book got to me. It has a mysterious title: "AGRICOLA/DE RE/METALLICA/HOOVER/1556/1912." Agricola (whose German name was Bauer) completed the original work in 1556. Hoover (both Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover) completed their English translation in 1912. The title means something like, "All About Metals."

I believe my grandfather actually read this book, and my mother may have read it also; but I have never seen it open. It was treated as an object of veneration - or, maybe as a fancy paperweight or doorstop. It rested flat on the bottom shelf of a certain table in our living room. Ask, and you would be treated to the story of how my mother as a high school student wrote a letter to then-former President Hoover, saying that her father, a mining engineer wanted a copy of his book, and asking where she could get one to surprise him. Mr. Hoover sent her the book.

Very recently, I looked inside, and I was surprised to find that I got quite a lot from reading the first few pages of the book. What is more, thinking about metals - what they are, how we use them, their social and environmental cost - is as important today as it was in Agricola's day. I no longer think this is a book only for mining engineers. I am going to read more and write about it in this blog. I welcome comments and discussion from anyone from any perspective that can help me understand it better.