Braving biting January winds, 120 New Yorkers attended the much-anticipated launch of Nicolas Niarchos’s The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth, at The Spectator’s (still) unfinished, unfurnished penthouse digs.
Niarchos is a journalist whose reporting has appeared in the New Yorker, the Nation and the New York Times. He has testified on the effects of Congolese battery metal mining on Capitol Hill and his investigations into mining in Indonesia were shortlisted for a 2024 Livingston Award. The Elements of Power, his first book, tells the story of the war for the global supply of rare earth minerals used in batteries and semiconductors and the terrible, bloody human cost of this badly misunderstood industry.
Niarchos’s work is the result of years of on-the-ground research and fearless reporting. In a 2022 trip to Congo, he was on his way to interview the cannibal warlord Gédéon Kyungu when he was detained by the Congolese secret police and transferred to a jail cell in Kinshasa. Some quick thinking on Niarchos’s part and a later intervention by the State Department would secure his release, but not before he was banned from ever returning to Congo – a story which made for a lively talk and Q&A.
Following the conversation, guests lined up for signed copies of the book, sold by McNally Jackson, and mingled over pints of stout provided by our event sponsor Guinness. It was your typical, colorful Speccie crowd, including writers Bob Colacello, James Reginato, Sadie Stein and Steven Aronson. Artists Hugo Guinness, Malu dalla Piccola Niarchos and Angelica Hicks. Photographer Nikolai von Bismarck, PR whizzes Savannah Engel and Harrison Vail and filmmakers Darius Rubin and Jake Cheetham. The 7th Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley, Major General Charles Corcoran, art advisor Bernard La Grange, art directors Nathan Clements Gillespie and Walter Arader. Gallerist Paul Henkel and the New Yorker’s Peter Canby, Neima Jahromi and Carolyn Kormann.
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