Here I am, sitting quietly and comfortably in front of my tiny wooden desk, typing these lines on the keyboard of my laptop computer, peeping from time to time through the light linen of the curtain and the protective window-pane at the bare branches of the tree outside. I hold the book in my hand, I feel its texture, the pliancy of the page and I begin to follow the sequence of small inky signs over the white page.

With words in this style, Ivan Amato begins his book, having captivated us for the long journey through time and space that lies ahead. But what is he looking for? The title of the book sounds like an enigma or, at the very least, a provocative joke. Would you dedicate any of your precious time to read about “stuff” – the materials that the world is made of? If you are someone who knows a lot about science in general – and materials science in particular – then probably not. And yet, once you start to read the author’s descriptions of how materials were originally designed by trial and error alone, you cannot help but follow his story of how we have learned to transform natural substances into the elaborate materials that we encounter in our daily lives.

Where will you go along this journey? Having firmly established that stuff is everywhere, the author presents us with a rather subjective diagram that plots the relative importance of various materials against the time when they were first developed. But this book is not an encyclopaedia that allows you to find information that you happened to miss. No, Ivan Amato is a writer – a science writer, in fact – who knows how to attract the general reader to his work. He tells stories, lots of them, and even if you already know parts of what is described, you will certainly learn a lot more.

Let me hint at some of the author’s tales of how man has learnt to handle, transform and process matter – from prehistory to the modern age. He describes the emergence of the metallurgical and chemical industries in the 19th century, and is fascinated by the ingenuity and variety of approaches taken by those who were involved at the time. He is excited by the way in which the trial and error method has now been replaced by a more elaborate yet organized approach to developing new materials. He takes us swiftly through the golden years of the first half of the 20th century, when many great discoveries in physics and chemistry were made. He examines how large scientific projects, triggered by the Second World War, gave birth in the early 1960s to the new field – or “superdiscipline” – of materials science. Built on inputs from physics, chemistry and biology, materials science deals with the invention, development, applications and commercialization of new materials and manufacturing processes.

Then at about page 100 we are suddenly installed on a ski-jump ramp that takes us into the materials science of the last thirty years. The explosion of research in this area has been lead by our growing ability to study materials on the atomic scale, and to find out how they can be formed into specific micro-architectures. We can also understand, model and predict the structure and properties of new materials with the help of mathematics and computers. Analysis, synthesis and theory of materials are the cornerstones of this quest, as illustrated by a myriad of well told short stories in the book. The author is favourably positioned to do this, for he has met many of those who have been at the forefront of materials science since the early days. He has got to know them well and this human dimension permeates the entire text.

We move among the different tribes, prides and packs of the community. We attend the Materials Research Society’s annual conference, held each year in Boston. We see the global race that lead to the development of synthetic diamond films, formed by chemical vapour deposition from gaseous mixtures of methane and hydrogen. We read about the sophisticated multi-layer architecture of calcium carbonate “microbricks” in the abalone seashell – just one of the inspirations for those who seek to mimic nature in new polymers and biocompatible materials. We also look at the concept of “smart materials” – the idea that structural components can detect unusual constraints and react to accommodate them – which finally became fully accepted in the 1980s. In the chapter entitled “The Materials Serengeti”, we are presented with examples that range from the new molecular forms of carbon, known as fullerenes and nanotubes, to the prediction that a material built from atoms of carbon and nitrogen can be harder than diamond.

In the last two chapters, we are ready to enter the future. The author tackles the new creativity in materials science, which has replaced the old approach of designing new materials. He describes the modern technologies that have helped us to build new electronic devices, and to produce steel that is twice as strong as before. We get to know characters like Federico Capasso of Bell Labs, who has become the master of “band-gap engineering”. Capasso tamed the huge new molecular beam epitaxy chambers, which can deposit semiconductors – atomic sheet by atomic sheet – to create nanometre-thick alternating layers of gallium indium arsenide and aluminium indium arsenide. He used these superlattices to demonstrate the properties of quantum cascade lasers at room temperature that he had predicted.

Another character we meet is the American Greg Olson, who studied how to produce alloys with given mechanical properties. He realized that with even as few as six elements, there are so many possible mixtures that it would be almost impossible to explore all of their properties as a function of composition. Olson abandoned the old, empirical approach, and suggested instead that the search could be made using a new type of diagram, which relates how the material is processed to its structure and properties. This approach has been used to predict the properties of high-performance steel alloys used in bearings. I particularly enjoyed the illustration that shows how these types of diagrams are as valid for creating steel alloys as they are for designing ice-cream with the right flavour, texture, appearance and cooling sensation to satisfy a gourmet.

The message of the book is clear. The time has come to “make the stuff of your dreams”. We have the theories, the computers and the models to create a material with any property we want. But what will the social and political consequences of this new ability be? And what will be the driving forces in the future? These subjects are only briefly mentioned at the end of the book, but they would, I feel, deserve to be treated elsewhere in full. I hope that Amato – a master in turning the serious into the enjoyable – will bring his special touch to these topics.

When you close the book, you know that you will return to it. The stuff inside is a rich source of stories that can be used for both undergraduate and graduate teaching. My only criticism is that I would have preferred it if the author had travelled a little more widely. He would have discovered that materials science extends far beyond the US and that there are many fascinating stories all over the world. Nevertheless, thank you, Ivan Amato, for your very enjoyable book.