Air
The Restless Shaper of the World
New York : W.W. Norton, [2012]
Format: Book
Edition: First edition.
Description: xiv, 398 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
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.
Contents:
Floating -- Darwin's dust -- The spore sucker -- Where fungi are -- Splash, fire, blow, fling -- The Ergot of the rye -- Lifted, lofted, and living -- The pollen rain -- Invisible cities -- Is the furniture poison? -- The air after 9/11 -- Spinning -- Weaving -- Vortices -- Ground truth -- El Greco's clouds -- The big mistake -- The forecasters -- The weather on D-Day -- Forcing -- The winds -- Firestorm -- Flying -- Dragged aloft -- Saab in flight -- The common crane -- Stall practice -- The bat, the bee, the bar-headed goose -- The Lee wave -- The wind riders -- What now? -- Telling -- The wilderness of pheromones -- Mother and child communion -- Allure -- The atmosphere of the beloved -- Zooming in -- Aphids in the invisible world -- The Bolas spider -- Calling -- What Is sound? -- Parrot duets -- The answered question -- Nothing in It but what goes through It -- Enchanted -- Sonata form and chaos -- The Aeolian Harp -- Breathing -- The tarpon's breath -- Fenchel's dance -- The quantity of breath -- Fogging the mirror -- Shall these bones live? -- Shining -- Why the daytime sky is light -- There is only one Sun -- The sap rising -- The air is a slow cold flame.
ISBN:
9780393067989 (hardcover)
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
SCIENCE Log | Main (Downtown) | Third Level, Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 370-384) and index.