Air: The Restless Shaper of the World

by William Bryant Logan

Overview

In a sublime exploration of the most unpredictable element of the earth, William Bryant Logan opens our eyes to the astonishing physics, chemistry, biology, history, art, and even music of the air.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393083842
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/13/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

William Bryant Logan is a practicing arborist and the author of Dirt, Oak, Air, and Sprout Lands.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

Floating

Darwin's Dust 24

The Spore Sucker 33

Where Fungi Are 48

Splash, Fire, Blow, Fling 50

The Ergot of the Rye 59

Lifted, Lofted, and Living 63

The Pollen Rain 66

Invisible Cities 71

Is the Furniture Poison? 76

The Air after 9/11 82

Spinning

Weaving 90

Vortices 99

Ground Truth 108

El Greco's Clouds 115

The Big Mistake 122

The Forecasters 128

The Weather on D-Day 139

Forcing 146

The Winds 152

Firestorm 162

Flying

Dragged Aloft 168

Saab in Flight 171

The Common Crane 174

Stall Practice 181

The Bat, the Bee, the Bar-Headed Goose 192

The Lee Wave 201

The Wind Riders 205

What Now? 216

Telling

The Wilderness of Pheromones 226

Mother and Child Communion 233

Allure 237

The Atmosphere of the Beloved 243

Zooming In 248

Aphids in the Invisible World 255

The Bolas Spider 258

Calling

What Is Sound? 262

Parrot Duets 267

Tfce Answered Question 272

Nothing in It but What Goes through It 277

Enchanted 282

Sonata Form and Chaos 289

The Aeolian Harp 295

Breathing

The Tarpon's Breath 300

Fenchel's Dance 305

The Quantity of Breath 312

Fogging the Mirror 322

Shall These Bones Live? 328

Shining

Why the Daytime Sky Is Light 336

There Is Only One Sun 338

The Sap Rising 342

The Air Is a Slow Cold Flame 348

Notes 352

Bibliography 370

Index 385

Editorial Reviews

"Logan is an enjoyable companion with which to explore his subject. He is erudite and thoughtful, with an agreeable mix of the personal and scientific"

Seattle Times - David B. Williams

"Logan’s meticulously researched and engagingly presented treatise is a breath of, well, fresh air."

Booklist (starred review) - Carol Haggas

"Splendid. . . . Logan delivers vast amounts of science with brevity and elegance."

Nature

"[A] delightful Wunderkammer of a book. . . . Air is... a spore-world of essays, essaylets, mini-biographies, gossip, whispers, lists, prose-poems and asides. ...Cheery, chatty and compulsively curious, Mr. Logan is able to draw the reader into pretty much any subject... In this lovely book, Mr. Logan makes the air airy again."

Wall Street Journal - Robert Macfarlane

"Splendid. . . . Logan delivers vast amounts of science with brevity and elegance."

Nature Lib

An examination of the all-encompassing role that the atmosphere plays in shaping our lives. Arborist Logan weaves together history, philosophy and culture in the third volume of his trilogy. As in his earlier works--Dirt (1995) and Oak (2005)--he celebrates the union of the inorganic and organic realms that nurture life: "The air cannot be owned. It cannot be controlled…It changes the fate of creatures and the destiny of peoples." The author explains that his purpose is to make us aware of how remarkable the role of the atmosphere is in the evolution of life on Earth and in every aspect of daily existence. Too often we take it for granted, he writes, except when problems arise. In our focus on air quality and global warming, we tend to forget that it is the medium in which spores, fungi, airborne bacteria and pollens circulate--along with soot and other pollutants. Logan provides a biting critique of the failure of government officials to be honest with the population of New York City about the dangerous level of pollution following 9/11, when he was able to accurately measure the air quality as he worked to save trees in the area. He explains how global patterns of air circulation are responsible for cyclones and describes the problem faced by weather forecasters because of the famous butterfly effect: how "the smallest unobserved change could make the difference between a sunny day and a massive storm." Logan celebrates the atmosphere as a medium of communication--transmitting pheromones as well as sound, bird calls, music--and notes that the breath of life separates the living from the dead. A tour-de-force journey through the natural world.

Kirkus Reviews