E.S. Hartwell is a nonfiction author and researcher based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work begins far from home — in the places where history still leaves physical traces, where a country road or an unmarked archive can hold the answer to a question no one thought to ask.

Trained as an economist, she came to nonfiction through the back door. The discipline gave her something more durable than a specialty: a way of seeing global processes as a single, interconnected fabric, and the analytical patience to follow a thread across continents, centuries, and fields without losing the pattern. What began as a method for reading markets became, over time, a method for reading civilizations — and for noticing the substances and systems we have stopped seeing because they have always been there.

She writes in English and reads in Italian and Russian, which allows her to follow her subjects across languages and empires without relying on the translations of others. Her field research has taken her from the salt halls of Hallstatt to the abandoned royal works at Salins-les-Bains, from the natron beds of Wadi El Natrun to the medieval canals of the Veneto. Her sources range from state archives in Venice and Boston to peer-reviewed journals in clinical medicine, from satellite imagery to the road signs of villages no guidebook has bothered to list.

E. S. Hartwell is known for her ability to translate complex data into accessible, engaging narratives. In Worth Your Salt, she brings her investigative prowess to bear on one of humanity's most misunderstood minerals, inviting readers to rethink everything they thought they knew.

She lives in Boston with her library, her notes, and the next question...