Air-Borne
The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe
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- € 7,49
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‘An extraordinary history of the perils and promise of every breath we take’ – James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath
‘Another brilliant work from one of the very best science writers, Air-Borne will leave you agog at the incredible world that floats unseen around us’ – Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World
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Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air – and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life.
In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. From NASA scientists conducting trailblazing experiments in the sky, to governments building clandestine arsenals of biological airborne weapons, Air-Borne prompts us to look at the world with fresh eyes.
Weaving together spellbinding history with the latest reporting on airborne threats to global health, this masterwork makes visible an invisible world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York Times science columnist Zimmer (Life's Edge) delivers an invigorating chronicle of how humanity's understanding of airborne microbes has evolved from the 19th century through the Covid pandemic. He notes that early scientific efforts to understand airborne life included French chemist Louis Pasteur's ascent of an Alpine glacier to test whether germs were "everywhere in the air at all times" or varied in density depending on location. Detailing the clever experiments that confirmed germs could spread via airborne particles, Zimmer describes how in 1934, Harvard University scientist William Wells sampled air from a lecture hall as he used a fan to spread sneezing powder through the room. Samples collected after class showed the most bacterial growth, indicating that germs from sneezing students collected not just on surfaces where saliva droplets had fallen but also in the air. The closing chapters bring Zimmer's larger ambitions into focus as he blends the stimulating history with first-rate reporting on the Covid pandemic, explaining that the medical community's continued skepticism of Wells's ideas meant medical professionals accepted only belatedly that Covid spread through airborne particles instead of droplets on surfaces, resulting in mixed messages about the effectiveness of masks that had deadly consequences. This astute history of the scientific debates that shaped the Covid crisis will take readers' breath away.
