Cobalt Red

How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

By: Siddharth Kara

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Long-listed, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, New Yorker Best Books of the Year, 2023

This program includes an author's note read by the author.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial audiobook, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2023 Siddharth Kara (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

2024, Pulitzer Prize - Finalist

2023, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, New Yorker Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

"Cobalt Red is a riveting, eye-opening, terribly important book that sheds light on a vast ongoing catastrophe. Everyone who uses a smartphone, an electric vehicle, or anything else powered by rechargeable batteries needs to read what Siddharth Kara has uncovered."—Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air

"Meticulously researched and brilliantly written by Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red documents the frenzied scramble for cobalt and the exploitation of the poorest people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”—Baroness Arminka Helic, House of Lords, UK

“With extraordinary tenacity and compassion, Siddharth Kara evokes one of the most dramatic divides between wealth and poverty in the world today. His reporting on how the dangerous, ill-paid labor of Congo children provides a mineral essential to our cellphones will break your heart. I hope policy-makers on every continent will read this book.”—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

Makes your perspective change

Makes you second guess every purchase I will make in the future. Has a lasting impression on me.

Great book about an awful subject t

This is an eye opening and disheartening look at how greed and suppression of information lead to humans making victims of their fellows.

Best exposure of child labor I have ever read! Ex

Exposes role of China, but not the history of United States in the rape of the Congo.

Thank you for this

Ah, this book was informative, infuriating, thought provoking and a call to action that everyone consuming these products should understand the cost to the people in Africa.

Eye Opening

What an eye opening experience. Great story line the way it was presented. It is a bit hard to get through as the stories are so morbid and there are so many. These kinds of issues should be exposed and perused. Recommend this to anyone who cares to really know where all our technologies really originate.

Eye opening

This book is eye opening to the atrocities happening in the DRC. The chapters are wrong on the audio but presentation was good

Truth about artisanal cobalt miners mistreatment & the greed fueling our EV craze, computers, phones, etc.

I like the courage it took to expose the truth & what it will take to raise awareness about working conditions

Shocking, Insightful and Heartbreaking

I have no words other than it is a MUST READ and then we MUST TAKE ACTION!

A book everyone should read

Well writen, very serious story. important to know this is happening in the Kongo over there.

Human Cost of Corporate Greed

Excellent research into something so many take for granted in this tech world. This will open your eyes to the modern day slavery in our world. It will inform you on the greed of corporations and how they will ignore the problem. Africa has been exploited for centuries and not just the people but all their resources. Thank you for all the hard work you put into this and let’s hope something can be done about this.