Lithium be cut with a knife. When cut, it possesses a silvery-white color that quickly changes to gray as it oxidizes to lithium oxide. While it has one of the lowest melting points among all metals (180 °C), it has the highest melting and boiling points of the alkali metals. Lithium has a very low density (0.534 g/cm), comparable with pine wood. It is the least dense of all elements that are solids at room temperature; the next lightest solid element (potassium, at 0.862 g/cm) is more than 60% denser. Furthermore, apart from helium and hydrogen, it is less dense than
The World Is What It Is in 1996. The biography has been extensively reviewed: the reviewers include Paul Theroux, who wrote an earlier book about Naipaul. The biography was selected by the editors of the "New York Times Book Review" as one of the "Times"' "10 Best Books of 2008". It won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, and the British literary award the Hawthornden Prize. The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in