The fascinating science and history of the air we breathe
** GUARDIAN SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 **
Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a child and now he is a writer in Washington DC. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, Air & Space/Smithsonian and New Scientist. In 2009 he was a runner-up for the National Association of Science Writers' Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for best science writer under the age of thirty. He currently writes for Science. His first book, The Disappearing Spoon, was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Royal Society's Winton Prize for science writing.
Absorbing, entertaining... provocative but compelling...
eminently accessible and enjoyable. A real gas - in short! --
Robin McKie * Observer *
Funny, clever and altogether effervescent... Kean writes
superbly about science itself... A joy for any reader -- James
McConnachie * The Sunday Times *
There is no denying the pleasure and indeed the wealth of
scientific information to be obtained from reading Caesar's Last
Breath. It will change forever the way I think about breathing.
* Financial Times *
Kean is the teacher you wish you'd had: genial, companionable
and infectiously enthusiastic. This is an entertaining and
accessible guide to the mysterious vapour of gases. Popular science
at its best. -- Simon Humphreys * Mail on Sunday *
It's a helluva read. And it's a gas. -- Tim Radford * The
Guardian *
An altogether excellent read, an invigorating and stylish mixture
of chemistry, history and reportage that brings to light many of
the untold stories of the air that surrounds and sustains us *
Times Literary Supplement *
This vibrant, fact-filled science book makes the chemistry of
air riveting * Sunday Times Must Reads *
Told with Kean's trademark combination of goofy wisecracking and
an exceptional knack for communicating the principles of
science * Wall Street Journal *
Fascinating stories, so insightful, informative, and disarmingly
written. It gave this astronaut a new respect for the air around us
all, and made me delightfully more aware of each breath I take.
-- Col. Chris Hadfield, author of An Astronaut's Guide to Life on
Earth
Brims with such fascinating tales of chemical history that it'll
change the very way you think about breathing.... Kean crams the
book full of wild yarns told with humorously dramatic flair.... The
effect is oddly intimate, the way all good storytelling is -- you
feel like you're sharing moments of geeky amusement with a
particularly hip chemistry teacher * San Francisco Chronicle
*
The most fun to be had from nonfiction is a good science book,
with a writer of craft who can capture both the excitement and the
elegance of science, the incredible fact that this is really how it
works. Sam Kean is such a writer and Caesar's Last Breath is
such a book. An enormous pleasure to read. -- Mark Kurlansky,
author of Cod
Sam Kean has done it again - this time clearly and
entertainingly explaining the science of the air around us. He is a
gifted storyteller with a knack for finding the magic hidden in the
everyday. -- Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive
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