The Alchemy of Air
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A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions of lives--including your own.At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world's scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives. Their invention continues to feed us today; without it, more than two billion people would starve.But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and high explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. Today we face the other unintended consequences of their discovery--massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of two master scientists who saved the world only to lose everything and of the unforseen results of a discovery that continues to shape our lives in the most fundamental and dramatic of ways.From the Hardcover edition.
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Everything comes at a cost—we just don't always know what that will be or when we'll have to pay. Haber and Bosch saved the world from Malthusian collapse and in the process gave us both WWI and WWII, not to mention obesity, diabetes, and oceanic dead zones. (We don't have a say in whether or not it was worth it. There are no do-overs in history, and as yet we have little visibility into parallel universes.)
This was a surprisingly enjoyable book: an (IMO) appropriate mix of history, biography, speculation, and opinion. Hager provides useful context for understanding the world of that time—the agricultural need for nitrogen, the political environment—while also weaving in the personalities involved, the technical problems solved (not technical enough for my taste, which probably means it might be just-right for yours). It's a complex story, well woven, with nuances I was not aware of: Haber, for instance, comes off as (a bit) less of a monster than I had previously thought. (He's still a monster, just, I guess, more human and deserving of compassion). There's bits of geology, biology, economics; cameo roles from Darwin and Einstein; all of it enhancing the story, none of it superfluous. Hager finishes with a what-now describing the current (ahem) fallout of the H-B system: unprecedented amounts of fixed nitrogen in the atmosphere/biosphere and the consequences thereof, which we will soon have to deal with. All of it thoughtfully presented.
Suggestion should you choose to read it: there's a section at the end with an additional paragraph or two for each chapter, I would recommend reading each one after finishing the chapter, not in bulk after finishing the book.
