Your Life Is Manufactured : How the World is Made and How We Can Do it Better

A Waterstones, FT and Telegraph Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Society Science Book Prize
Longlisted for the 2025 Financial Times & Schroder Business Book of the Year

From mega-factory floors, engineering laboratories and seaports to distribution hubs, supermarkets and our own homes, embark on an eye-opening guided tour through the world of manufacturing and its transformational influence on our lives and the planet.

Featuring a new afterword

'Revelatory.' Sunday Times
'Fascinating.' Telegraph
'Illuminating.' i
'Intensely readable.' Irish Times
'Well-observed and enjoyably written.' Financial Times

Unless you are floating naked through space, you are right now in direct contact with multiple manufactured products, be it furniture, technology, clothing, or even food. The processes by which these things appear in our lives are virtually invisible. How often do we stop to think: Where do the things we buy actually come from?

Charting the byzantine journeys taken by everyday items to reach us, "Your Life is Manufactured" reveals the seismic impact manufacturing has had on our lives and the natural world, and explores how it could offer us a path to a truly sustainable, more equitable future. In doing so, Minshall grants us the ability to make better choices for ourselves, our communities and the planet.

'An extraordinarily good read.' David Spiegelhalter