Sam Kean is a writer of books that discuss scientific discoveries in a relatable and entertaining style. Four of his books, The Violinist’s Thumb, The Disappearing Spoon, The Tale of The Dueling Neurosurgeons, and this one: Caesar’s Last Breath, were all named as Amazon’s top science book of the year.
Caesar’s Last Breath tackles the subject of the air we breathe; of gases more generally; and how their composition on earth tells the story of the evolution of the earth and of the ways in which mankind has changed its planet.
Nitrogen and oxygen are the main ingredients of air, making up 99 per cent of what you inhale. If you ever wondered how small atoms (and in combination, molecules) actually are, Sam Kean includes a stunning set of statistics about the air we breathe. Every time you take a breath, you inhale nine sextillion molecules of nitrogen (78% of the air) and two sextillion molecules of oxygen (21% of air).
But you inhale a lot of the remaining 1% of molecules as well; for example, whenever you breathe, you take in 120 billion molecules of sulfur dioxide and 60 billion molecules of hydrogen sulfide. Other gases you breathe include methane, ethanol, helium, argon, and more.
That one per cent turns out to be pretty significant. It is responsible for all of global warming as well as all scents and perfumes. It includes gases released by volcanic eruptions, a number of pollutants from industrial development, and particles from nuclear bomb fallout.
Kean’s exploration of the history of the air we breathe is peppered with interesting and eccentric characters. He begins with Harry Randall Truman, a stubborn man who refused to leave Mount Saint Helens in 1980 even after two months worth of warnings from the mountain itself. He tells what would have happened to him, as well as to the victims of the great eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and how those volcanic gases altered the atmosphere.
March 1944: Gases rising out of Mt. Vesuvius during its worst eruption in more than 70 years. In the foreground is the city of Naples. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
He profiles various chemists who studied gases, such as Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier – executed during the French Revolution – who once mummified a colleague to study breathing. He describes attempts to affect levels of rainfall, to predict the weather, and to take advantage of layers of air in the atmosphere for spying, this latter effort leading to “UFO” sightings around Roswell, New Mexico in the late 1940s.
Evaluation: Kean is an excellent raconteur, and this collections of facts and anecdotes will have you itching to share them with everyone around you.
Rating: 4/5
Published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, 2017
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