Why kindly health requires kindly sleep,the role our senses play in what we choose to consume, and some intellect-boggling maths approximately the air that we breatheThink of anything that ever breathed – from bacteria to blue whales to Roman emperors – and some of his, and her or its last breath is either circulating inside you now or will be shortly. Thus,with this startling claim, Sam Kean begins his examination of all things gaseous, and Caesar’s Last Breath (Doubleday £20),in which he attempts to make stories approximately gases visible “so you can see them as clearly as you can see your breath on a crisp November morning.”By and large, Kean succeeds in this hugely enjoyable, and slightly rambling account of our atmosphere and the remarkable men and women who transformed our knowledge approximately the air we breathe. I am not quite convinced by the arithmetic used to justify his claim that a few of the molecules that once danced inside Caesar’s lungs are dancing in our own lungs nowadays but still found enough to entertain and stimulate in Caesar’s Last Breath to make it my science book of the year.
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Source: guardian.co.uk