Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Nonfiction
  3. Business

Read and listen for free for 30 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.0(2)

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.


Narrators:

  • Aarathi Prasad
  • Lucinda Roberts

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 11 h 3 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Nonfiction
  • Business
  • Natural sciences
  • Physics and chemistry
  • Natural sciences
  • Technology
  • Nonfiction
  • Climate, nature, and animals
  • Culture
  • Arts and photography

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. The Chick and the Dead

    Carla Valentine

    audiobook
  2. Blood and Guts

    Richard Hollingham

    audiobook
  3. Sounds Like Titanic : A Memoir

    Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

    audiobook
  4. The Horologicon : A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language

    Mark Forsyth

    audiobook
  5. Extraterrestrial : The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

    Avi Loeb

    audiobook
  6. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes : Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession

    David Grann

    audiobookbook
  7. Illicit

    Moisés Naím

    audiobook
  8. Left for Dead : Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World

    Eric Jay Dolin

    audiobook
  9. The Hidden Life of Life : A Walk through the Reaches of Time

    Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

    audiobook
  10. Bad Gays

    Huw Lemmey, Ben Miller

    audiobook
  11. Fathoms : The World in the Whale

    Rebecca Giggs

    audiobookbook
  12. The Darkness Manifesto : Our Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life

    Johan Eklöf

    audiobook

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5