Your Atomic Self

"Delightful alchemy: Curt Stager transforms atomic science into lustrous, golden stories about the hidden connections that unite us all." —David George Haskell, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Forest Unseen

What do atoms have to do with your life? In Your Atomic Self, scientist Curt Stager reveals how they connect you to some of the most amazing things in the universe.


You will follow your oxygen atoms through fire and water and from forests to your fingernails. Hydrogen atoms will wriggle into your hair and betray where you live and what you have been drinking. The carbon in your breath will become tree trunks, and the sodium in your tears will link you to long-dead oceans. The nitrogen in your muscles will help to turn the sky blue, the phosphorus in your bones will help to turn the coastal waters of North Carolina green, the calcium in your teeth will crush your food between atoms that were mined by mushrooms, and the iron in your blood will kill microbes as it once killed a star.


You are not only made of atoms; you are atoms, and this book, in essence, is an atomic field guide to yourself.


"Read this book and I guarantee you that the world—and your own darned self—will look very different to you in the future." —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Wandering Home and The End of Nature

"A wondrous exploration of how our interconnections are vast and abiding, past, present and future." —Kirkus Reviews

"Stager is . . . a gifted scientist with the eyes of an artist and the heart of a poet." —Lee Billings, author of Five Billion Years of Solitude