Rent: An Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere

Gabrielle Walker has a doctorate degree in chemistry, so AN OCEAN OF AIR: WHY THE WIND BLOWS AND OTHER MYSTERIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE comes from an expert who tailors her knowledge to the general public. This makes for a special recommendation for general-interest libraries catering to an audience which likes science presented in a lively, intriguing fashion. Chapters blend history and intriguing facts about the people who uncovered the secrets of weather and the atmosphere with hard science, making for a most accessible, even fun survey perfect for the non-college amateur science reader.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

'Nice that someone with a Cambridge doctorate can relate the history of atmospheric science anecdotally, as a sequence of more or less exciting stories, in a style that can connect with anyone at high-school age who's curious about how it works.

Walker discusses early conjectures about the weight of our air, the first inkling that it's made up of different gases, the wind patterns that blew Columbus across the ocean and the jets above a certain level that propel planes, what the Northern lights are, how telegraph and radio waves travel, the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer, etc. Much complication and controversy about our gradually enlarging grasp of the layers that make for life is absent, but that's only as it should be for curious beginners. This book may well entice many to reach beyond.

Walker also tells of some early missteps by James Lovelock - of special interest to one who arrived late at his Gaia account, long after learning of it via the osmosis of our current, near-universal environmental awareness. And it's as unsurprising to see with what ease he retracted these early gaffes in view of the facts that came to bite him with refutation.

My only misgiving about this book, and it's major, is about the lack of illustrations. I counted three, where another two dozen would have enriched the learning -- especially since this book's pitched at the introductory crowd. `Popular Mechanics' magazine and Leonardo DaVinci before that showed how science gains through illustrations; conversely, that explanations about physics are hobbled in their absence. Take this: "The magnetic field that surrounds our planet looks like an apple cut in half: Its lines of force emerge from the South Pole, bend over the equator, and disappear back into the North Pole ...form[ing] an almost impenetrable magnetic barrier... However, the lines emerging most steeply from the South Pole do not connect with their counterparts in the North. Instead, both poles have a smattering of field lines that point directly up into space." (p 215) It takes some doing to visualize all of this, whereas a single picture would do it quickly and unmistakably. Pictures get around verbal gymnastics and enliven science's nuts and bolts with direct representations of forces, complex machinery, experimental equipment, etc. (Walker's editors also failed her on this in Snowball Earth: The Story of a Maverick Scientist and His Theory of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We Know It, which doesn't have a single image.) Her next books would be greatly enriched, and she'd enlarge her readership considerably, once her publishers get her together with a good illustrator.)

Our thin atmosphere is vital, literally, and it's encouraging to see Walker suggest that it's silly to think of "escaping" our planet: earth is home, just as we belong in time. That dream is really a nightmare except in the most distant and desperate future. What remains for us is to tend to it - and what better first step than to grasp some of its complexity?
***½

I bought this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR. Not being one who has a particularly scientific bent, I found what she was saying fascinating. The author takes something that we so often take for granted and puts a different, breathtaking view on it. I definitely recommend this book!

The prologue in An Ocean of Air recounts Captain Kittinger's extraordinary parachute jump from the edge of space to the desert in New Mexico. The epilogue describes the ascent of a weather balloon in Greenland. Sandwiched between these two accounts, the reader meets the scientists who devoted their time to discovering complexities of the air surrounding us.

The spectrum spans from Galileo (who tried to measure the weight of air when he was in his seventies) to Van Allen, after whom the radiation belts are named. In between, the reader meets several other personalities that come from all walks of life. The common bond tying them all together is that they all worked to understand the atmosphere, had to challenge notions of their day, and ultimately refined our knowledge of the atmosphere.

What is intriguing is that the reader is introduced to the prevailing notion of air, the questions that these scientists posed, the empirical methods they used to satiate their curiosity, and the knowledge they bequeathed to humanity. There are no equations, just details of these scientists' lives that make their quest personal and high-level overview of the prevailing wisdom. Thus readers are invited to shares in the trials, tribulations, and eventual successes that these men experienced.

Air is often thought as "nothing" (an "empty" glass for example). Galileo sought to "weigh" nothingness. In turn he could pose the question that if air has weight, could it really be nothing? Thus the question's underlying assumption challenged the prevailing notion that air is nothing. From the time of the Ancient Greeks, air was thought to be an element (and hence indivisible). Priestley's work (which separate the gases in air) challenged this notion and the theory of "different airs" developed. Walker presents these and many other notions that eventually bring the reader to contemporary theories. No doubt as scientific work progresses, our notion of the atmosphere will evolve.

While Walker is a scientist, her writing style is akin to that of a novelist. The descriptions are vivid, the prose is fluid, the text unassuming - making the book a page-turner (if there ever could be a page-turner science book)!

Armchair Interviews says: Some interesting information.

Gabrielle Walker's "An Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere" is really more about the scientists who studied the atmosphere than it is about the atmosphere. Walker traces mankind's scientific discoveries about the atmosphere from the seventeenth century discovery that air had weight, through the discovery he air or our atmospherof the various gases that comprise the atmosphere, through Marconi's wireless telegraphy (with no mention of Nikolai Tesla), culminating in Van Allen's discovery of the magnetic belts that surround the earth and protect us from the sun's deadly radiation.

The meat of the book, though, focuses on the scientist's who made these discoveries and how they made them. Walker wrote a short biographical sketch on every featured scientist, and then explained their experiments as they deduced or stumbled into new discoveries about the atmosphere that surrounds us. Unfortunately, this book focuses much more on the scientists than the science itself, and the science of the atmosphere almost gets lost as Walker sees to be more in love with some of the eccentric personalities more than the science of the atmosphere. For example, despite the title, there is only one chapter on the wind and weather -- an explanation of the prevalent winds (trade winds, westerlies, and polar easterlies). She even takes us down an odd detour discussing the sinking of the Titanic and the wireless operators on board her, although this had little if anything to do with the rest of the story. In addition to more actual science, this book also would have benefited from many more diagrams than the couple included in the book.

Despite this, this is an entertaining and well-written book, with understandable explanations of the science of the atmosphere when she finally gets around to explaining the hard science. Her underlying story is that our atmosphere is fragile and vital to our existence in more ways than we realize. Although I did enjoy reading this book, at the end I felt that I had learned a lot more about the history of science than I had about "why the wind blows and other mysteries of our atmosphere."