Air
The Restless Shaper of the World
Published on 6. August 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
418 pages
978-0-393-34539-1 (ISBN)
Description
Air sustains the living. Every creature breathes to live, exchanging and changing the atmosphere. Water and dust spin and rise, make clouds and fall again, fertilizing the dirt. Twenty thousand fungal spores and half a million bacteria travel in a square foot of summer air. The chemical sense of aphids, the ultraviolet sight of swifts, a newborn's awareness of its mother's breast-all take place in the medium of air.
Ignorance of the air is costly. The artist Eva Hesse died of inhaling her fiberglass medium. Thousands were sickened after 9/11 by supposedly "safe" air. The African Sahel suffers drought in part because we fill the air with industrial dusts. With the passionate narrative style and wide-ranging erudition that have made William Bryant Logan's work a touchstone for nature lovers and environmentalists, Air is-like the contents of a bag of seaborne dust that Darwin collected aboard the Beagle-a treasure trove of discovery.
Ignorance of the air is costly. The artist Eva Hesse died of inhaling her fiberglass medium. Thousands were sickened after 9/11 by supposedly "safe" air. The African Sahel suffers drought in part because we fill the air with industrial dusts. With the passionate narrative style and wide-ranging erudition that have made William Bryant Logan's work a touchstone for nature lovers and environmentalists, Air is-like the contents of a bag of seaborne dust that Darwin collected aboard the Beagle-a treasure trove of discovery.
Reviews / Votes
" As with his earlier works . . . [Logan] celebrates the union of the inorganic and organic realms that nurture life. . . . Logan celebrates the atmosphere as a medium of communication-transmitting pheromones as well as sound, bird calls, music-and notes that the breath of life separates the living from the dead." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "[A] delightful Wunderkammer of a book. . . . Air is... a spore-world of essays, essaylets, mini-biographies, gossip, whispers, lists, prose-poems and asides. ...Cheery, chatty and compulsively curious, Mr. Logan is able to draw the reader into pretty much any subject... In this lovely book, Mr. Logan makes the air airy again." -- Robert Macfarlane - Wall Street Journal "Logan is an enjoyable companion with which to explore his subject. He is erudite and thoughtful, with an agreeable mix of the personal and scientific" -- David B. Williams - Seattle Times "Logan's meticulously researched and engagingly presented treatise is a breath of, well, fresh air." -- Carol Haggas - Booklist (starred review) "Splendid. . . . Logan delivers vast amounts of science with brevity and elegance." -- Nature
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Illustrations
20 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 211 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
425 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-393-34539-1 (9780393345391)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2012
W. W. Norton & Company
€15.49
Available for download
Person
William Bryant Logan is a practicing arborist and the author of four acclaimed books on nature: Sprout Lands, Dirt, Oak, and Air. He is on the faculty of the New York Botanical Garden and lives in Brooklyn, New York.