Gasp!: The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air

Description

From a baby's first breath-that universal and fundamental entry into life outside the womb-air is taken for granted. Joe Sherman's The Book of Air is an entertaining investigation of air and the discoveries of how it works in the body and in our world. Inhale, and learn about the difference between your aerobic capacity and Lance Armstrong's; exhale, and follow the observation and science of the atmosphere from Aristotle to Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen; hold your breath and investigate why over the last two centuries air has transformed from something marvelous into something menacing. In The Book of Air, Joe Sherman blends the history and myths of air, together with its environmental and physiological effects, into a rich and sometimes troubling account of what gives us our life force.

Joe Sherman lives in Montgomery, Vermont, near the Canadian border. He is the author of other books, including The House of Shelburne and In the Rings of Saturn.

"In a thoughtful and engaging manner, and without writing like an environmental polemicist, Sherman sheds light on a substance that is becoming more and more opaque." "Like his subject, Joe Sherman's prose is at turns calm or gusty, playful, hot, chilling, lucid, breezy, or furious as a hurricane. Mostly, Gasp! will make you think hard about the miracle of the air we breathe, how it came to be, and what we are doing to it... With Gasp!, Sherman... establishes himself as a first-rate writer of popular science... Gasp! is a tour de force, a wondrous romp through this magical substance we breathe." -- Mark Pendergrast