Caesar's Last Breath

I love Sam Kean and this pop science accounting of various atmospheric gases does not disappoint. Roughly arranged by contribution to Earth's atmosphere, the chapters bounce from hot air balloons to chemical warfare. Kean focuses on depth rather than breadth, making for memorable and engaging reading.

A truly enjoyable weave of science and history.

Kean starts us thinking about the air we breathe, the molecules in it...the shear complexity of combinations of what is in a single breath. A little bit of math later, and we are practically made of every contemporary and every one who came before us.

We learn about the big changes in the air over millenia, leading from the “air” of our planet as a baby to the “air” of our planet today..with some brief discussion of air on other planets. This part of the narrative includes fascinating discussions of geophysics, chemistry, astronomy, and ... a curious old wisecracker.

Then, Kean takes us, molecule by molecule, through the discovery of components of air - great stories with a cast of characters that you simply could not make up. Scientists are the best.

I recommend this book to people interested in science. It is particularly attractive to me, and perhaps to you, because I “know” a lot of this information, but history and science have always been separate boxes in my head. This narrative helped to draw lines in time and across people so that the scientific discoveries and personalities became more real than theorems and equations.