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This title in other editionsAn Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphereby Gabrielle Walker
Staff Pick
Fans of Dava Sobel and Simon Winchester: this book is for you. A fascinating brief history of the scientists and mathematicians who discovered the atmosphere that makes our planet habitable, Walker's intricate and engaging book quickly captures the imagination and reveals our remarkable world. Relevant and intriguing, this indelible work will leave you thinking about our atmosphere in an entirely new way. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:In 1960, Captain Joseph Kittinger fell to earth from the edge of space and lived. He stepped from the basket of a gigantic helium balloon into an appalling, hostile environment which, without the protection of a pressure suit, would have simultaneously frozen his body and boiled away his blood. It is the air that Kittinger fell through that makes our lives on earth possible. Air is about more than just breathing. Air transforms miraculously into solid food, and without it every creature on earth would starve; it wraps our planet in a blanket of warmth; radio signals bounce off a floating mirror of metal in the air to travel round the world; and the outer layer of our atmosphere soaks up flares from the sun more violent than all the world's nuclear warheads put together. In this exuberant work, Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with stories of the people who uncovered its secrets: • A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is: The air filling Carnegie Hall, for example, weighs seventy thousand pounds. • A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds invisible winds [or giant rivers of air?] that blow with the force of a hurricane five miles above our heads. • An impoverished American farmer figures out why storms move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door. • A well-meaning but ill-fated inventor creates wonder chemicals that nearly destroy the ozone layer (he also came up with the idea to put lead in gasoline [he did the lead first]). • A reclusive mathematical genius with a predilection for painting his toenails cherry red figures out the technology that would come to the rescue of the Titanic. An Ocean of Air is a triumphant celebration of the fragile complexity of Earth's atmosphere and a completely engaging work of popular science. Review:"Most of the time we hardly notice that we're moving through air. But when a storm system whips it into a whirling mass that grows into a tornado or a hurricane, then the air around us makes headlines. Science consultant Walker (Snowball Earth) presents a lively history of scientists' and adventurers' exploration of this important and complex contributor to life on Earth, from Galileo's early attempts to show that it has weight to the explorations by 20th-century scientists Oliver Heaviside and Edward Appleton of the ionosphere, which acts as a giant mirror bouncing radio waves from one side of the globe to another. Walker provides readers with easy-to-follow discussions of the science behind the discovery that carbon dioxide levels are rising exponentially; the theoretician who left her computer for Antarctica and discovered a huge ozone hole created by chlorofluorocarbons; why hurricanes form only in the tropics and why global warming may lead to more violent storms. She goes far afield at times, spending too much time on the Van Allen belts, for instance, but readers will find this informative book to be a breath of fresh air." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"'Most of the time we hardly notice that we're moving through air. But when a storm system whips it into a whirling mass that grows into a tornado or a hurricane, then the air around us makes headlines. Science consultant Walker (Snowball Earth) presents a lively history of scientists' and adventurers' exploration of this important and complex contributor to life on Earth, from Galileo's early attempts to show that it has weight to the explorations by 20th-century scientists Oliver Heaviside and Edward Appleton of the ionosphere, which acts as a giant mirror bouncing radio waves from one side of the globe to another. Walker provides readers with easy-to-follow discussions of the science behind the discovery that carbon dioxide levels are rising exponentially; the theoretician who left her computer for Antarctica and discovered a huge ozone hole created by chlorofluorocarbons; why hurricanes form only in the tropics and why global warming may lead to more violent storms. She goes far afield at times, spending too much time on the Van Allen belts, for instance, but readers will find this informative book to be a breath of fresh air.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Book News Annotation:London-based Walker holds a doctorate in chemistry from Cambridge U.,
and is an award-winning science writer who has presented many
programs for BBC Radio. In her second popular science work after
Snowball Earth (2003), she examines the Earth's atmosphere and some
of the people who have explored and used their knowledge of it over
the centuries.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:We dont just live in the air. We live because of it. . . . "Who knew air could be so interesting? Like the scientific mavericks she profiles, Gabrielle Walker had the freshness of vision to realize that within its presumed-nothingness lay the most fascinating, profound revelations about life on earth. This is science writing at its best: clear, witty, relevant, unbelievably interesting, and just plain great."-- Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers "The subject is hot, the science is cool, and Gabrielle Walker's style is lighter than air. Warmly recommended." --Jonathan Weiner, author of The Beak of the Finch "Extraordinary . . . The scientists are almost as interesting as their science."—Simon Singh "[Walker provides] counter-intuitive delights... This is a fabulous introduction to the world above our heads."--Mail on Sunday (UK) Synopsis:We spend our lives surrounded by air, hardly even noticing it. Its the most miraculous substance on earth, yet responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In fact, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. In this exuberant book, gifted science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered its secrets:• A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is: The air filling Carnegie Hall, for example, weighs seventy thousand pounds.• A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds a set of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads.• An impoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door.• A well-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer.• A reclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before hes proved right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fed by the glowing tails of shooting stars. About the AuthorGABRIELLE WALKER earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Cambridge. She is a contributing editor at New Scientist magazine and has taught in the science-writing program at Princeton. She lives in London. Table of Contentscontents
Prologue xi part 1 comfort blanket chapter 1: the ocean above us 3 chapter 2: elixir of life 26 chapter 3: food and warmth 58 chapter 4: blowing in the wind 88 part 2 sheltering sky chapter 5: the hole story 129 chapter 6: mirror in the sky 159 chapter 7: the final frontier 196 Epilogue 232 Acknowledgments 236 Suggestions for Further Reading 239 Endnotes 247 Index 262 What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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