Here are 100 books that The Alchemy of Air fans have personally recommended if you like
The Alchemy of Air.
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I’ve been at least a part-time environmental journalist for more than 25 years, and food and agriculture is arguably the biggest environmental problem—the biggest driver of water shortages, water pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and the second-biggest driver (after fossil fuels) of climate change. And it occurred to me in 2019 that I didn’t know squat about it! I realized that if I was spectacularly ignorant, others probably were, too, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
This is a classic work of environmental history, an exploration of not only the growth of Chicago but the inextricable links between the city and its countryside.
Today, there’s an even sharper distinction between the food producers who live in rural areas and the food consumers who live everywhere else, politically as well as economically, and it’s not always clear who’s making the bigger mess. But this is an essential book about the rise of Big Ag and its impact on the landscape.
In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve been at least a part-time environmental journalist for more than 25 years, and food and agriculture is arguably the biggest environmental problem—the biggest driver of water shortages, water pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and the second-biggest driver (after fossil fuels) of climate change. And it occurred to me in 2019 that I didn’t know squat about it! I realized that if I was spectacularly ignorant, others probably were, too, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
This wonderful history by the author of 1491 and 1493 tells the story of Norman Borlaug, the “wizard” who believed high-tech, high-yield agriculture could feed the world and prevent the destruction of nature, and William Vogt, the “prophet” who believed our unsustainable growth would doom the planet and ourselves.
Borlaug essentially launched the Green Revolution that has tripled the world’s crop and livestock yields, preventing mass starvation and deforestation. But modern-day enviros point out that it hasn’t prevented all starvation and deforestation, and the ideological battles that Mann recounts are still being fought today.
In forty years, the population of the Earth will reach ten billion. Can our world support so many people? What kind of world will it be? In this unique, original and important book, Charles C. Mann illuminates the four great challenges we face - food, water, energy, climate change - through an exploration of the crucial work and wide-ranging influence of two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt.
Vogt (the Prophet) was the intellectual forefather of the environmental movement, and believed that in our using more than the planet has to give, our prosperity will bring us to…
After many years of studying the subject and still more writing about it, my mind is still blown away by the fact that pretty much everything around you is a chemical of some kind. Even more impressive to me is that all of the molecules that make up everything you can see, smell, touch, and taste are made from combinations of just a handful of elements. The periodic table is a one-page summary of pretty much everything, the ultimate Lego kit to build a whole universe. I love finding out about and telling the stories of these incredible chemical constructions.
Chemistry saves our lives every second of every day without us usually noticing it. Primo Levi’s personal history with chemistry perhaps saved him from the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
This extraordinary book is a series of snapshots from Levi’s life each linked to a different element. I would recommend reading anything Primo Levi has written, The Periodic Table is just the best place to start.
An extraordinary kind of autobiography in which each of the 21 chapters takes its title and its starting-point from one of the elements in the periodic table. Mingling fact and fiction, science and personal record, history and anecdote, Levi uses his training as an industrial chemist and the terrible years he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz to illuminate the human condition. Yet this exquisitely lucid text is also humourous and even witty in a way possible only to one who has looked into the abyss.
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I’ve been at least a part-time environmental journalist for more than 25 years, and food and agriculture is arguably the biggest environmental problem—the biggest driver of water shortages, water pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and the second-biggest driver (after fossil fuels) of climate change. And it occurred to me in 2019 that I didn’t know squat about it! I realized that if I was spectacularly ignorant, others probably were, too, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
I think it gets a lot wrong about agriculture, and it’s responsible for a lot of romantic myths about what farms that will make it very difficult for us to eat less of the earth—starting with the idea that the environmental tragedy of agriculture was intensification (chemicals and other modern practices that allowed farmers to grow more food per acre) rather than extensification (the transformation of nature into agriculture as farmers use more acres to grow food).
But Pollan is a beautiful writer, and he identified many real problems with industrial agriculture; there’s a reason his book has inspired so many not-nearly-as-compelling copycat books about regenerative agriculture.
What shall we have for dinner? Such a simple question has grown to have a very complicated answer. We can eat almost anything nature has to offer, but deciding what we should eat stirs anxiety. Should we choose the organic apple or the conventional? If organic, local or imported? Wild fish or farmed? Low-carb or low-cal? As the American culture of fast food and unlimited choice invades the world, Pollan follows his next meal from land to table, tracing the origin of everything consumed and the implications for ourselves and our planet. His astonishing findings will shock all who care…
After many years of studying the subject and still more writing about it, my mind is still blown away by the fact that pretty much everything around you is a chemical of some kind. Even more impressive to me is that all of the molecules that make up everything you can see, smell, touch, and taste are made from combinations of just a handful of elements. The periodic table is a one-page summary of pretty much everything, the ultimate Lego kit to build a whole universe. I love finding out about and telling the stories of these incredible chemical constructions.
Sack’s biography of his childhood in London is full of chemical curiosity and surrounded by family members who shared his enthusiasm, encouraged his experimentation, and supplied seemingly endless fascinating stories about elements and chemistry. There are stories of Sacks making powerful stinks in the garden shed and the titular Uncle Tungsten who talked about metals as though they were friends.
This memoir from Oliver Sacks is both a departure from and an enhancement of his previous psychologically orientated 'medical' writing. Not only is it a beautifully written account of an English childhood - seasoned by a childish passion for science - but it is told from the intimate and revelatory perspective of one of the most important and humane writers on psychology alive today. Oliver Sacks has the literary artistry of WH Auden and the intellectual rigour and questioning mind of Stephen Jay Gould. The world authority in his field, this is a remarkable insight into the mind and background…
After many years of studying the subject and still more writing about it, my mind is still blown away by the fact that pretty much everything around you is a chemical of some kind. Even more impressive to me is that all of the molecules that make up everything you can see, smell, touch, and taste are made from combinations of just a handful of elements. The periodic table is a one-page summary of pretty much everything, the ultimate Lego kit to build a whole universe. I love finding out about and telling the stories of these incredible chemical constructions.
A biography of a molecule that features in my book.
Mauve changed fashion, industry, and medicine. While trying to make quinine in the lab, the only malaria drug available at the time, William Perkin created mauve, the first artificial dye. Other chemists later discovered malaria drugs derived from Perkin’s mauve.
In 1856 eighteen-year-old English chemist William Perkin accidentally discovered a way to mass-produce color. In a "witty, erudite, and entertaining" (Esquire) style, Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as industrial applications of chemistry research. Occasionally honored in certain colleges and chemistry clubs, Perkin until now has been a forgotten man.
"By bringing Perkin into the open and documenting his life and work, Garfield has done a service to history."-Chicago Tribune "[A]n inviting cocktail of Perkin biography, account of the dye industry and where it led, and social and…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
After many years of studying the subject and still more writing about it, my mind is still blown away by the fact that pretty much everything around you is a chemical of some kind. Even more impressive to me is that all of the molecules that make up everything you can see, smell, touch, and taste are made from combinations of just a handful of elements. The periodic table is a one-page summary of pretty much everything, the ultimate Lego kit to build a whole universe. I love finding out about and telling the stories of these incredible chemical constructions.
Yes, it’s a book all about one element, and that element just happens to be my favourite, but it’s also a book about biology, history, alchemy, ghosts, spontaneous human combustion, murder, industrial poisoning, and war.
I have spent plenty of time in the lab getting to know phosorus at a very personal level, but this book revealed a whole new side to the element. If, like me, you love the macabre and gothic, the sinister and the scientific, this is the element and the book for you.
Born of the age of alchemy and harbouring the kind of mysterious influence that alchemists sought, phosphorus brought wealth to a few but misery to many. For over 300 years, phosphorus maimed, killed, polluted and burned - sometimes on a terrifying scale. Yet, such were its perceived benefits that doctors prescribed it, every home contained it and whole industries were dedicated to its manufacture
'This is popular science at its best, a great subject, unfolded with the skill of the storyteller' - Lisa Jardine, Sunday Times
'An excellent and convincing read' - Financial Times
I’ve been at least a part-time environmental journalist for more than 25 years, and food and agriculture is arguably the biggest environmental problem—the biggest driver of water shortages, water pollution, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, and the second-biggest driver (after fossil fuels) of climate change. And it occurred to me in 2019 that I didn’t know squat about it! I realized that if I was spectacularly ignorant, others probably were, too, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
Foer is best known as a brilliant novelist, but he’s also a vegan activist, and We Are the Weather is one of the first and most memorable books to make the point that our taste for meat is ravaging the planet and destabilizing the climate.
It is a strange book—the first 63 pages are mostly a rumination on the Holocaust and various forms of psychological denial—and Foer, a magnificent writer, is a somewhat less magnificent analyst of science and politics.
But his key point is vital and unassailable: The earth is becoming an animal farm, and if we’re going to avoid a climate catastrophe, we’re going to have to eat less animal flesh.
I first went to Berlin after college, determined to write a novel about the German Resistance; I stayed a quarter of a century. Initially, the Berlin Airlift, something remembered with pride and affection, helped create common ground between me as an American and the Berliners. Later, I was commissioned to write a book about the Airlift and studied the topic in depth. My research included interviews with many participants including Gail Halvorsen. These encounters with eyewitnesses inspired me to write my current three-part fiction project, Bridge to Tomorrow. With Russian aggression again threatening Europe, the story of the airlift that defeated Soviet state terrorism has never been more topical.
Nothing epitomizes the striking success of the Berlin Airlift more than the true story of the so-called “candy bomber.”
This was a USAF pilot who on his own initiative started dropping candy tied to handcrafted mini-parachutes out of his transport plane to give the children of Berlin a little sweetness in their otherwise bleak lives. His gesture more than any transformed the “terror bombers”—responsible for so much of Berlin’s destruction—into friends in the eyes of the Berliners.
This book is an autobiographical account by the candy bomber himself, Lt. Gail Halvorsen. It is written with candid clarity and heartwarming charm. A gem!
The Berlin Candy Bomber is a love story-how two sticks of gum and one man's kindness to the children of a vanquished enemy grew into an epic of goodwill spanning the globe-touching the hearts of millions in both Germany and America.
In June 1948, Russia laid siege to Berlin, cutting off the flow of food and supplies over highways into the city. More than two million people faced economic collapse and starvation. The Americans, English, and French began a massive airlift to bring sustenance to the city and to thwart the Russian siege.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
The American-born son of Jewish refugees, I would have every reason to revile the erstwhile capital of The Third Reich. But ever since my first visit, as a Fulbright Fellow in 1973, Berlin, a city painfully honest about its past, captured my imagination. A bilingual, English-German author of fiction, nonfiction, plays, poetry, travel memoir, and translations from the German, Ghost Dance in Berlin charts my take as a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in a villa on Wannsee, Berlin’s biggest lake, an experience marked by memorable encounters with derelicts, lawyers, a taxi driver, a hooker, et al, and with cameo appearances by Henry Kissinger and the ghost of Marlene Dietrich.
This idiosyncratic biography of Rahel Levin Varnhagen, a 19th-century German-Jewish Berlin literary salon hostess may at first seem esoteric to the general reader. A prickly, contradictory character, Arendt’s portrayal of Rahel’s outsider status as a Jew in a largely hostile Christian society, her proto-feminist self-affirmation of her womanhood at a time when women were essentially groomed for marriage, and her paradoxical mix of intellectual self-assurance and crippling emotional insecurities make for a riveting read. You don’t have to be Jewish or a woman to appreciate the complexities of this prototypical Berliner.
Born in 1771 as the daughter of a Jewish merchant, Rahel Varnhagen would come to host one of the most prominent salons of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Hannah Arendt discovered her writings some time in the mid-1920s, and soon began to re-imagine Rachel's inner life and write her biography. Arendt draws a lively and complex portrait of a woman during the period of the Napoleonic wars and the early emancipation of the Jews, a figure who met and corresponded with some of the most celebrated authors, artists, and politicians of her time. She documents Rahel's attempts to…
