Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Kara's writing style is very engaging, and it reads pretty quickly (it is under 300 pages) but if you're familiar with the topic it's a really 101 read. While there wasn't much new information for me I think it's a powerfully written and cleareyed intro to the topic and I would recommend it to anyone who has just started hearing about what's going on in Congo. Kara uses a handful of personal stories to really drive home the fact that the people paying the price are people and especially children and those stories are utterly heart shattering (Elodie's story in particular completely wrecked me).

I personally came to the topic following mining incidents in Burkina Faso, different country same disregard for human lives on the part of multinationals, the situation is similar, so I'd say it'll give you a good general idea of the state of mining practices and of how unregulated materials enter the supposedly regulated supply chains across the board even if the individual actors are different.