Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses

There is not just one story of silk. In silk is science, history and mythology. In silk is the future.

Aarathi  Prasad’s Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a  unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.

Through  the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals  from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history,  natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the  world for millennia.

For silk, prized for its lightness,  luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials  ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first  bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its  potential. As the technologies it has inspired – from sutures to  pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms – continue to be  developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning  to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics  choking our planet.

Prasad's Silk is a cultural and biological  history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists  who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the  habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders and molluscs. Because there  is more than one silk, there is more than one story of silk. More than  one road, more than one people who discovered it, and wove its threads.

From  the moths of China, Indonesia and India to the spiders of South America  and Madagascar, to the silk-producing molluscs of the Mediterranean,  Silk is a book rich in the passionate connections made by women and men  of science to the diversity of the animal world. It is an intoxicating  mix of biography, intellectual history and science writing that brings  to life the human obsession with silk.