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An Ocean of Air: a Natural History of the Atmosphere [Hardcover] [Jan 01, 2007] Gabrielle Walker
Gabrielle Walker
321 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2007
126 people are currently reading
1144 people want to read
About the author
Gabrielle Walker
15 books49 followersDr Gabrielle Walker is an expert on climate change and the energy industry. She has been a Professor at Princeton University and is the author of four books including co-authoring the bestselling book about climate and energy: The Hot Topic, which was described by Al Gore as “a beacon of clarity” and by The Times as “a material gain for the axis of good”.
Gabrielle is currently Chief Scientist at Xynteo, an advisory firm with a mission to reinvent growth: to enable businesses to grow in a new way, fit for the resource, climate and demographic realities of the 21st century.
She has been Climate Change Editor at Nature and Features Editor at New Scientist and has written very extensively for many international newspapers and magazines. [from author's website]
Gabrielle is currently Chief Scientist at Xynteo, an advisory firm with a mission to reinvent growth: to enable businesses to grow in a new way, fit for the resource, climate and demographic realities of the 21st century.
She has been Climate Change Editor at Nature and Features Editor at New Scientist and has written very extensively for many international newspapers and magazines. [from author's website]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
September 13, 2022
This book to me was essentially two books that don’t always meld together perfectly. Walker is a good writer and is skilled at demonstrating complex ideas in a way I could understand. The first half of the book is a history of people who have done research on air starting with Galileo (plus a bit on ancient Greeks). It wasn’t really until the Renaissance and Galileo’s time that scientific research was really possible. In any case, this part of An Ocean of Air summarizes the lives and research important to the development of our understanding about the air we live in.
Part two explains what the ozone layer is and what all other protective layers above us do. It’s well written and something I probably have taken for granted too much. Walker’s book is full of warning about our misuse of the environment.
Part two explains what the ozone layer is and what all other protective layers above us do. It’s well written and something I probably have taken for granted too much. Walker’s book is full of warning about our misuse of the environment.
April 15, 2008
A copy of An Ocean of Air should be on every library bookshelf in the world. I found this text both immensely informative and extremely interesting. Quite a number of times, I jumped up, put the book down, and went to find someone to tell about an remarkable fact or a story about a particular scientist that I thought was amusing.
The book is set up in chronological order, exploring the various issues surrounding air. It starts off with the presumptions about air that our ancestors had about the substance. Then, it begins looking at the various individuals who were courageous, curious, and sometimes just plain mad enough to ask questions and seek answers. The stories progress throughout touching on a variety of associated topics from chemical composition of air and the ozone layer to carbonation and space flight.
Apart from the historical and scientific usefulness of this book, I also want to note the humanizing aspect of the various scientists. Often when we picture scientists, we assume that they sit in their laboratory using their great intellect to uncover scientific discoveries. We don't often think about the sacrifices of these individuals or that often such discoveries have not always been popular. Moreover, often the most interesting successful experiences were those that went horribly wrong.
The book is set up in chronological order, exploring the various issues surrounding air. It starts off with the presumptions about air that our ancestors had about the substance. Then, it begins looking at the various individuals who were courageous, curious, and sometimes just plain mad enough to ask questions and seek answers. The stories progress throughout touching on a variety of associated topics from chemical composition of air and the ozone layer to carbonation and space flight.
Apart from the historical and scientific usefulness of this book, I also want to note the humanizing aspect of the various scientists. Often when we picture scientists, we assume that they sit in their laboratory using their great intellect to uncover scientific discoveries. We don't often think about the sacrifices of these individuals or that often such discoveries have not always been popular. Moreover, often the most interesting successful experiences were those that went horribly wrong.
December 11, 2019
I wish we were exposed to this kind of narrative when learning undergraduate chem and physics. As I was reading I could feel all of that knowledge finally clicking into place. One of the best science narratives I have ever read.
January 29, 2017
I got this book from the library, because everyone needs a bit of non-fiction once in a while (Or at least I felt that I did) It promised to be 'A Natural History of the Atmosphere'. It wasn't. Each individual chapter is fascinating, with all sorts of interesting sidenotes, and vivid people who leap to staggering yet true conclusions. Yet it is not a natural history of the atmosphere. It is a human history of the atmosphere, of the (white men) who discovered the conditions that make earth safe for us. The atmosphere is the background, and the people are the foreground. Of course, I acknowledge that writing about the atmosphere without people would be dull. But what of spiritual ideas about the atmosphere, how science changed our relationship to the atmosphere, how climate change continues to change it? That didn't come up. So I finished this story with an incomplete, incoherent view of the atmosphere, one where people have discovered interesting facts about how it works, but apart from the chapter openers, I didn't see the whole of it. However, it gets points for being interesting, and Gabrielle Walker for being a female scientist.
Interesting sidenote 1: My mother kept calling it the 'ocean book' which is very wrong.
Interesting sidenote 2: We were next to the ocean and it rained and this book got totally wet and I had to buy another copy. Not much air in that, it may have drowned.
Interesting sidenote 1: My mother kept calling it the 'ocean book' which is very wrong.
Interesting sidenote 2: We were next to the ocean and it rained and this book got totally wet and I had to buy another copy. Not much air in that, it may have drowned.
Read
February 5, 2009Although Gabrielle Walker, author of Snowball Earth (2003), holds a Cambridge doctorate in chemistry, her ear for storytelling is perfect for popular science. One critic praises her lyrical style; others praise her use of detail, anecdote, and science that wouldn't be out of place in Meteorology 101. Critics inevitably compare Walker to Dava Sobel (Longitude; Galileo's Daughter; The Planets, *** Jan/Feb 2006), one of the genre's most popular writers. Walker has honed her skills as a contributing editor of Scientific American, and her breezy tone fits her subject perfectly. Even though her choice to start from square one may frustrate readers with some previous knowledge in the area, Walker has penned an engaging, readable book-nothing too heavy, and worth the reader's every breath.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
August 12, 2017
I love non-fiction books that give a new perspective on the things that surround us and that we often don’t think much of at all. In this case, I don’t think I will ever see air the same way again. In fact, if it had been up to me I would have titled it “The Sky Above Us” because it had a similar impact on how I saw the atmosphere as “The Sea Around Us” had on how I saw the ocean.
The book compares our atmosphere to an ocean, and based on scale alone (which I had never really thought of) the comparison is apt – Earth’s atmosphere weighs 3,750,000,000,000,000 tons. And like the oceans, its activity is an immense driver of climate patterns and the life they support; for one thing, the wind patterns in the troposphere are the reason the world’s major deserts are located 30 degrees north and thirty degrees south of the equator (examples include Sahara and the Gobi Deserts in the northern hemisphere and the Atacama and the Australian outback in the southern hemisphere), even though the equator is hotter. And yet, “we give our own overlying air-ocean so little respect that we even describe anything that’s full of air as being “empty.” (page 5).
And then there is the difference between looking up at the sky versus looking down at the sky. Almost everyone has looked up, and seen the vast expanse of blue, looking surprisingly solid and perhaps populated with some fluffy or wispy clouds. But only a few people have journeyed to the edge of space, and have seen something radically different:
“Where Earth’s surface curved away from the horizon, a glowing blue halo stood out against the blackness of space. This glow was the atmosphere, the single greatest gift our planet possesses…That thin blue line has transformed our planet from a barren lump of rock into a world full of life. And it is the only shield that stands between vulnerable earthlings and the deadly environment of space.”
Astronauts have often described it as one of the things that makes Earth look not only incredibly beautiful but also incredibly fragile.
This book is worth it for the prologue alone, which describes how Joe Kittinger used a helium-filled balloon to ascend over twenty miles above Earth, and then jumped (in appropriate survival gear). He was the first to do it; two similar jumps by others followed, the most recent in 2012. The prologue vividly described his descent through the various layers of the atmosphere that he fell through, explained some of the activity further above him (he did not ascend very far into the ionosphere because it is crackling with electrical activity), and effectively set the stage for the rest of the book. One passage I particularly enjoyed was:
“Kittinger was tumbling through another of our world's vital protective shields – the ozone layer. Ozone is miraculous stuff…High aloft it is both vigilant and resilient. Any invisible UV rays that had slipped through the ionosphere were being soaked up by a diffuse cloud of invisible gas. Split asunder by ultraviolet rays, the ozone molecules around Kittinger were calmly reforming. Like the burning bush encountered by Moses, they are constantly ablaze but never consumed.”
A subsequent chapter elaborated on the ozone layer and what it does for us, and I gained a new appreciation for it:
“Our ozone layer protects us so comfortably and effectively that we could easily never know the dangers that lie just a few miles above us. It works like a minefield: Whenever an ozone molecule is touched by an ultraviolet ray, it explodes, firing off one of its three oxygen atoms. But this is a minefield that reforms itself constantly. The shrapnel from the explosion – a stray oxygen atom and an ordinary oxygen molecule – recombine. And when they do the ozone is born again.” (page 131).
Also, this may be the first time I have heard ozone described as “beautiful” (it is a striking shade of blue). I will add that I was in grade school when the hole in the ozone layer exploded into the national conscience and CFCs became a household term. Needless to say, a great deal went over my head at the time, so it was good to have this description to fill in the gaps. A discussion of how CFCs came to be was very interesting – they were originally developed by a company conscientiously attempting to improve the safety of the refrigerators it produced in an age before government prodding. Because the book was published in 2007, I will add that a 2016 study published in Nature showed that the 1993 global ban on CFCs has been effective and the hole in the ozone layer has gradually begun to shrink and the layer itself is already slightly thicker.
Humans are not the only ones to have dramatically affected the composition of the atmosphere – plants have had – and continue to have – a huge impact when it comes to carbon dioxide: “The scale of this activity [plant-based photosynthesis] is staggering. Every year, green plants convert carbon dioxide into 100,000 million tons of plant material. To do this, plants use up 300 trillion calories of energy from the sun, which is thirty times the energy consumption of all the machines on Earth.” (page 68). The prologue also helped provide a new perspective on plant life. Kittinger landed in the desert of New Mexico, surrounded by yuccas and sagebrush. But where other people saw a dry desert and small, scrubby, and generally unattractive plants, he saw an almost impossibly lush landscape, explaining that, “fifteen minutes before I’d been on the edge of space, and now, to me, I was in the Garden of Eden.”
The book also touched on Earth’s magnetic field, which helps protect our atmosphere from the sun. Although it was not presented this way in the book, I found it helpful to think of the sun as a giant continuously detonating thermonuclear bomb throwing out just about every form of radiation on the spectrum. This radiation includes the solar wind, a stream of high-energy charged particles travelling over a million miles per hour. Earth’s intrinsic magnetic field extends over ten thousand miles into space and forces the solar wind and other blasts of electromagnetic radiation to part around it. Anything that does manage to get past the magnetic field still has the exosphere, ionosphere, and ozone layer to contend with. The result?
“I can scarcely believe that air too thin for me to breathe is yet strong enough to fend off everything that space can throw at us.
Yet it is. In October 2003, a series of explosions rocked the outer surface of the sun. A massive flare flash-fried Earth with X-rays equivalent to five thousand suns. A slingshot of plasma barreled toward us at two million miles an hour. The radioactivity it contained was the equivalent…of taking every nuclear warhead that has ever been made – not exploded, mark you, but made – and detonating them all at once.
And yet nobody on Earth felt a thing…The most massive solar flare since records began and one of the biggest radioactive maelstroms in history together met a far more formidable foe. They each arrived, and then, one by one they simply bounced off…thin air.” (page 235).
Highly recommended.
The book compares our atmosphere to an ocean, and based on scale alone (which I had never really thought of) the comparison is apt – Earth’s atmosphere weighs 3,750,000,000,000,000 tons. And like the oceans, its activity is an immense driver of climate patterns and the life they support; for one thing, the wind patterns in the troposphere are the reason the world’s major deserts are located 30 degrees north and thirty degrees south of the equator (examples include Sahara and the Gobi Deserts in the northern hemisphere and the Atacama and the Australian outback in the southern hemisphere), even though the equator is hotter. And yet, “we give our own overlying air-ocean so little respect that we even describe anything that’s full of air as being “empty.” (page 5).
And then there is the difference between looking up at the sky versus looking down at the sky. Almost everyone has looked up, and seen the vast expanse of blue, looking surprisingly solid and perhaps populated with some fluffy or wispy clouds. But only a few people have journeyed to the edge of space, and have seen something radically different:
“Where Earth’s surface curved away from the horizon, a glowing blue halo stood out against the blackness of space. This glow was the atmosphere, the single greatest gift our planet possesses…That thin blue line has transformed our planet from a barren lump of rock into a world full of life. And it is the only shield that stands between vulnerable earthlings and the deadly environment of space.”
Astronauts have often described it as one of the things that makes Earth look not only incredibly beautiful but also incredibly fragile.
This book is worth it for the prologue alone, which describes how Joe Kittinger used a helium-filled balloon to ascend over twenty miles above Earth, and then jumped (in appropriate survival gear). He was the first to do it; two similar jumps by others followed, the most recent in 2012. The prologue vividly described his descent through the various layers of the atmosphere that he fell through, explained some of the activity further above him (he did not ascend very far into the ionosphere because it is crackling with electrical activity), and effectively set the stage for the rest of the book. One passage I particularly enjoyed was:
“Kittinger was tumbling through another of our world's vital protective shields – the ozone layer. Ozone is miraculous stuff…High aloft it is both vigilant and resilient. Any invisible UV rays that had slipped through the ionosphere were being soaked up by a diffuse cloud of invisible gas. Split asunder by ultraviolet rays, the ozone molecules around Kittinger were calmly reforming. Like the burning bush encountered by Moses, they are constantly ablaze but never consumed.”
A subsequent chapter elaborated on the ozone layer and what it does for us, and I gained a new appreciation for it:
“Our ozone layer protects us so comfortably and effectively that we could easily never know the dangers that lie just a few miles above us. It works like a minefield: Whenever an ozone molecule is touched by an ultraviolet ray, it explodes, firing off one of its three oxygen atoms. But this is a minefield that reforms itself constantly. The shrapnel from the explosion – a stray oxygen atom and an ordinary oxygen molecule – recombine. And when they do the ozone is born again.” (page 131).
Also, this may be the first time I have heard ozone described as “beautiful” (it is a striking shade of blue). I will add that I was in grade school when the hole in the ozone layer exploded into the national conscience and CFCs became a household term. Needless to say, a great deal went over my head at the time, so it was good to have this description to fill in the gaps. A discussion of how CFCs came to be was very interesting – they were originally developed by a company conscientiously attempting to improve the safety of the refrigerators it produced in an age before government prodding. Because the book was published in 2007, I will add that a 2016 study published in Nature showed that the 1993 global ban on CFCs has been effective and the hole in the ozone layer has gradually begun to shrink and the layer itself is already slightly thicker.
Humans are not the only ones to have dramatically affected the composition of the atmosphere – plants have had – and continue to have – a huge impact when it comes to carbon dioxide: “The scale of this activity [plant-based photosynthesis] is staggering. Every year, green plants convert carbon dioxide into 100,000 million tons of plant material. To do this, plants use up 300 trillion calories of energy from the sun, which is thirty times the energy consumption of all the machines on Earth.” (page 68). The prologue also helped provide a new perspective on plant life. Kittinger landed in the desert of New Mexico, surrounded by yuccas and sagebrush. But where other people saw a dry desert and small, scrubby, and generally unattractive plants, he saw an almost impossibly lush landscape, explaining that, “fifteen minutes before I’d been on the edge of space, and now, to me, I was in the Garden of Eden.”
The book also touched on Earth’s magnetic field, which helps protect our atmosphere from the sun. Although it was not presented this way in the book, I found it helpful to think of the sun as a giant continuously detonating thermonuclear bomb throwing out just about every form of radiation on the spectrum. This radiation includes the solar wind, a stream of high-energy charged particles travelling over a million miles per hour. Earth’s intrinsic magnetic field extends over ten thousand miles into space and forces the solar wind and other blasts of electromagnetic radiation to part around it. Anything that does manage to get past the magnetic field still has the exosphere, ionosphere, and ozone layer to contend with. The result?
“I can scarcely believe that air too thin for me to breathe is yet strong enough to fend off everything that space can throw at us.
Yet it is. In October 2003, a series of explosions rocked the outer surface of the sun. A massive flare flash-fried Earth with X-rays equivalent to five thousand suns. A slingshot of plasma barreled toward us at two million miles an hour. The radioactivity it contained was the equivalent…of taking every nuclear warhead that has ever been made – not exploded, mark you, but made – and detonating them all at once.
And yet nobody on Earth felt a thing…The most massive solar flare since records began and one of the biggest radioactive maelstroms in history together met a far more formidable foe. They each arrived, and then, one by one they simply bounced off…thin air.” (page 235).
Highly recommended.
November 24, 2022
I learned more about the facial features of random scientists than the atmosphere. Five pages were about the Titanic sinking. There are six layers of the atmosphere: only three of them are mentioned in this book. I mean come on
July 21, 2011
I read this book as the current selection for the Monterey County Science Book Club, our meeting/discussion date will be held at the beginning of August.
I found this book, by Gabrielle Walker, to be quite a gem. I am not trained in the sciences so a book involving chemistry (I've never taken a chemistry course) is a bit intimidating. Yet Ms. Walker does not spend much time on the chemical reactions found in the atmosphere - she indeed goes over the concepts and presents them to the reader - but, instead, focuses more on the inventors who sought or stumbled upon various truths about the compostion and purpose of Earth's atmosphere.
In a sense, I found it to be a serial biography of interesting, intense, and odd personages whose lives and legacies had one thing in common: the atmosphere. Ms. Walker is certainly a witty writer. Every chapter included drole even hilarious excerpts from the scientist's life. Just when the discussion about the atmosphere became a bit scientific, she colored the story with an anecdote. One example is the discoverer who happened across the curvature of the Earth ... he operated a single engine plain and eloped with his soon-to-be bride. In attempting to woo her with his piloting skills, he landed on her farm and wisked her away as her parents ran after the plane, her father shouting and shaking his fist only to have the engine quit thus forcing him to make an emergency landing a few farm fields within eyeshot of her folks.
Without a doubt this is a good popular science book or even a good book to induct interested readers who are fascinated by science but still lack much of the course work; after all, it held my attention and I majored in cultural anthropology! I also enjoy people with a sense of humor and this writer knows how to enliven an otherwise dry topic. I give this book 4 stars.
I found this book, by Gabrielle Walker, to be quite a gem. I am not trained in the sciences so a book involving chemistry (I've never taken a chemistry course) is a bit intimidating. Yet Ms. Walker does not spend much time on the chemical reactions found in the atmosphere - she indeed goes over the concepts and presents them to the reader - but, instead, focuses more on the inventors who sought or stumbled upon various truths about the compostion and purpose of Earth's atmosphere.
In a sense, I found it to be a serial biography of interesting, intense, and odd personages whose lives and legacies had one thing in common: the atmosphere. Ms. Walker is certainly a witty writer. Every chapter included drole even hilarious excerpts from the scientist's life. Just when the discussion about the atmosphere became a bit scientific, she colored the story with an anecdote. One example is the discoverer who happened across the curvature of the Earth ... he operated a single engine plain and eloped with his soon-to-be bride. In attempting to woo her with his piloting skills, he landed on her farm and wisked her away as her parents ran after the plane, her father shouting and shaking his fist only to have the engine quit thus forcing him to make an emergency landing a few farm fields within eyeshot of her folks.
Without a doubt this is a good popular science book or even a good book to induct interested readers who are fascinated by science but still lack much of the course work; after all, it held my attention and I majored in cultural anthropology! I also enjoy people with a sense of humor and this writer knows how to enliven an otherwise dry topic. I give this book 4 stars.
February 22, 2012
This was superb. Some of the best science communication I've encountered in years: amusingly told, cohesive, and comprehensively referenced.
My only gripes were that it was not near long enough to go into further detail about atmospheric chemistry and physics, and the occasional jumping around in time to focus on another part of a developing story took some mild effort to note or retain. I would have loved to read more about the development of understanding of global climate mechanisms, and the interactions between sea, mountains, and atmosphere. I'm guessing that the author felt this was outside her area of focus with this book though.
The apparently common issue with the relative lack of diagrams or pictures didn't bother me in the slightest. With some careful reading, each of the experiments and their apparatus were clearly set out in words, and lovingly described in terms of the thought processes leading up to them, and the implications that flowed on from them.
I'm off to find everything else that Gabrielle Walker has written now.
My only gripes were that it was not near long enough to go into further detail about atmospheric chemistry and physics, and the occasional jumping around in time to focus on another part of a developing story took some mild effort to note or retain. I would have loved to read more about the development of understanding of global climate mechanisms, and the interactions between sea, mountains, and atmosphere. I'm guessing that the author felt this was outside her area of focus with this book though.
The apparently common issue with the relative lack of diagrams or pictures didn't bother me in the slightest. With some careful reading, each of the experiments and their apparatus were clearly set out in words, and lovingly described in terms of the thought processes leading up to them, and the implications that flowed on from them.
I'm off to find everything else that Gabrielle Walker has written now.
November 7, 2015
Air. So who ever thinks about it -- since air is everywhere, all the time? I never gave it much attention, until I discovered this book in the library.
Turns out that some really brilliant people have investigated air, starting with Galileo, and they have done some genius work to figure out what it is. Investigators include Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestly, James Van Allen, and Robert Boyle, just to name a few. They were collectively very ingenious with their experimental projects, failing countless times before finally getting a trustable answer.
Something that especially jumped out at me was the question, how much does air weigh? Nothing? 10 lbs? 200 lbs??? Answer: Air weighs a lot. A whole LOT. Take a basketball court, which measures 50 ft by 94 feet. At 14.7 psi, that translates to a weight of air at 9.9 million lbs. Pushing down on the basketball court. Incredible.
Turns out that some really brilliant people have investigated air, starting with Galileo, and they have done some genius work to figure out what it is. Investigators include Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestly, James Van Allen, and Robert Boyle, just to name a few. They were collectively very ingenious with their experimental projects, failing countless times before finally getting a trustable answer.
Something that especially jumped out at me was the question, how much does air weigh? Nothing? 10 lbs? 200 lbs??? Answer: Air weighs a lot. A whole LOT. Take a basketball court, which measures 50 ft by 94 feet. At 14.7 psi, that translates to a weight of air at 9.9 million lbs. Pushing down on the basketball court. Incredible.
July 8, 2010
This book was outstanding...a great source of real alouds for my science kids. The author had an amazing way of turning these long dead scientists into real people, simplifying the extraordinary science they discovered, and tying all the advances into relevance in today's world. I also really liked how the book makes you see the changing nature of what we know (scientifically speaking, of course)....and that science is not static.
March 19, 2014
An Ocean of Despair
I was assigned to read this book for my science class. It is very science and has elements of historical fiction. However, it is not a good book and is very difficult to read. I hated it and don't recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to have nightmares about the atmosphere for the rest of their lives. I appreciate her effort, but Walker makes the book very difficult to read.
I was assigned to read this book for my science class. It is very science and has elements of historical fiction. However, it is not a good book and is very difficult to read. I hated it and don't recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to have nightmares about the atmosphere for the rest of their lives. I appreciate her effort, but Walker makes the book very difficult to read.
December 21, 2016
Just wonderful.
February 14, 2021
This is an easy, anecdotal approach to some intriguing basics about atmospheric science, a well-related history told anecdotally, as a sequence of more or less exciting stories, in a style that will connect with anyone who's completed high school and is curious about how these things work.
Walker reviews early conjectures about the weight of our air, the first inkling that it's made up of different gases, the wind patterns that got Columbus across the ocean, 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, which should be of special interest to anyone learning late about his Gaia account--in my case, through the osmosis of our near-universal environmental awareness. The author also shows the ease with which Lovelock, with a genuine scientific spirit, came to retract his early gaffes in the light of facts that were at odds with his theorizing.
My only misgiving about this book, and I see it as major, is its lack of illustrations. I counted three, where another two dozen would have enriched the learning--especially since this book's pitched at an introductory crowd. `Popular Mechanics' magazine, and Leonardo DaVinci before that, showed how much science can gain with illustration; conversely, 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--why apple? why not orb?--whereas a single picture would manage it quickly and most clearly. Pictures anticipate questions, get around verbal gymnastics, and enliven science's nuts and bolts with direct presentations 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. Ir doesn't have a single image.) Her next books would be greatly enriched, and her readership might enlarge considerably, once her publishers pair her with a good illustrator.)
Our thin atmosphere is vital, quite literally, and I found it 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?
Walker reviews early conjectures about the weight of our air, the first inkling that it's made up of different gases, the wind patterns that got Columbus across the ocean, 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, which should be of special interest to anyone learning late about his Gaia account--in my case, through the osmosis of our near-universal environmental awareness. The author also shows the ease with which Lovelock, with a genuine scientific spirit, came to retract his early gaffes in the light of facts that were at odds with his theorizing.
My only misgiving about this book, and I see it as major, is its lack of illustrations. I counted three, where another two dozen would have enriched the learning--especially since this book's pitched at an introductory crowd. `Popular Mechanics' magazine, and Leonardo DaVinci before that, showed how much science can gain with illustration; conversely, 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--why apple? why not orb?--whereas a single picture would manage it quickly and most clearly. Pictures anticipate questions, get around verbal gymnastics, and enliven science's nuts and bolts with direct presentations 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. Ir doesn't have a single image.) Her next books would be greatly enriched, and her readership might enlarge considerably, once her publishers pair her with a good illustrator.)
Our thin atmosphere is vital, quite literally, and I found it 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?
January 15, 2022
I'm not sure when Tuesday Academy will meet again, but this would have been our January book for discussion. We may discuss it in June or July. Because Franklin Pierce professor Fred Rogers teaches geology and environmental science and is able to lead sessions in January, our pick for this month is always science related.
I did very much enjoy reading this and look forward to our discussion. Though the book is dated (copyright 2007) most of the information is historical and so would not matter. Science moves so quickly though and I would just wonder what fields have progressed and so are not represented as well. For example, in the prologue, the author talks about Captain Joseph Kittinger Jr. jumping from 20 miles high and saying that "Nobody has ever been able to emulate this feat." (p. xii) Actually two people have. Felix Baumgartner fell from 128 K and Kittinger was his mentor and capsule communicator. Alan Eustice surpassed Baumgartner's fall in 2014. So, what other facts have been lost since 2007?
The discoveries about air from 1633 - Galileo, to 1958 - James Van Allen, from oxygen to trade winds, are told from the perspective of the scientists who made the discoveries. This humanizes them and you get to meet some very interesting scientists along the way. Some were shy, humble, eccentric, quirky, and flamboyant. I really liked how the author presented them. The story of Thomas Midgley, his discovery/use of chloroflourocarbons, the hole in the ozone layer, and the struggle to repair this was fascinating. Though this was probably the best, there are many other such stories.
Worth the read!
I did very much enjoy reading this and look forward to our discussion. Though the book is dated (copyright 2007) most of the information is historical and so would not matter. Science moves so quickly though and I would just wonder what fields have progressed and so are not represented as well. For example, in the prologue, the author talks about Captain Joseph Kittinger Jr. jumping from 20 miles high and saying that "Nobody has ever been able to emulate this feat." (p. xii) Actually two people have. Felix Baumgartner fell from 128 K and Kittinger was his mentor and capsule communicator. Alan Eustice surpassed Baumgartner's fall in 2014. So, what other facts have been lost since 2007?
The discoveries about air from 1633 - Galileo, to 1958 - James Van Allen, from oxygen to trade winds, are told from the perspective of the scientists who made the discoveries. This humanizes them and you get to meet some very interesting scientists along the way. Some were shy, humble, eccentric, quirky, and flamboyant. I really liked how the author presented them. The story of Thomas Midgley, his discovery/use of chloroflourocarbons, the hole in the ozone layer, and the struggle to repair this was fascinating. Though this was probably the best, there are many other such stories.
Worth the read!
August 19, 2025
In order to better understand the trees upon which my own unique rune system is based [shameless plug here of The Talking Forest: Tree Runes for a New Millennium], I have set aside 2025 as a year in which to understand air, fire, water and earth, elements crucial to the existence of our forests.
First up is An Ocean of Air by Gabrielle Walker, a book every bit as fascinating, expansive and playful as the element she writes about. From the prologue, which details Joe Kittenger’s daring twenty-mile leap from the extreme edge of Earth’s atmosphere, the book engages us. It continues to hold us through to the epilogue, where we learn that in 2003, our planet’s outer air shield protected us all from a massive solar flare containing destructive energy equal to millions of atomic bombs.
Walker takes us on a world-wide tour of scientists and entrepreneurs whose curiosity led them to discover various aspects of the very nature of air. From researchers such as Galileo, Lavoisier and Van Allan, we are apprised of this nebulous element’s amazing power and aliveness, and the virtually magical abilities of its various components. With exuberance and compassion, Walker recounts the trials, tribulations and discoveries of people such as William Ferrel, the poor Appalachian farmer, who diligently studied the movements of earth’s winds; or Richard Carrington, who discovered a massive solar flare event eventually named for him.
The book’s layout and font make it easy to read and the attractive cover is very appropriate to the subject. After reading An Ocean of Air, you will forever after look upon our sky with greater awe and appreciation. 5 full stars
First up is An Ocean of Air by Gabrielle Walker, a book every bit as fascinating, expansive and playful as the element she writes about. From the prologue, which details Joe Kittenger’s daring twenty-mile leap from the extreme edge of Earth’s atmosphere, the book engages us. It continues to hold us through to the epilogue, where we learn that in 2003, our planet’s outer air shield protected us all from a massive solar flare containing destructive energy equal to millions of atomic bombs.
Walker takes us on a world-wide tour of scientists and entrepreneurs whose curiosity led them to discover various aspects of the very nature of air. From researchers such as Galileo, Lavoisier and Van Allan, we are apprised of this nebulous element’s amazing power and aliveness, and the virtually magical abilities of its various components. With exuberance and compassion, Walker recounts the trials, tribulations and discoveries of people such as William Ferrel, the poor Appalachian farmer, who diligently studied the movements of earth’s winds; or Richard Carrington, who discovered a massive solar flare event eventually named for him.
The book’s layout and font make it easy to read and the attractive cover is very appropriate to the subject. After reading An Ocean of Air, you will forever after look upon our sky with greater awe and appreciation. 5 full stars
April 26, 2021
This was such a fascinating book about the atmosphere. If you have always wanted to know what it’s made of, what each layer even does, and how it was all discovered and how it is being affected by global warming then you will love this.
The only reason I’m going with four stars is because I thought it would be more focused on the physical properties/processes and it was instead focused heavily on the lives of the various scientists who discovered how the atmosphere works. I’m not a huge fan of biographical writing, but if you are then you would really love this because the author put a lot of thought and research into small details.
Chapter 4 on the movement of air masses (which creates the trade winds, westerly winds, and the jet streams) was my favorite chapter because it was so well described that I could picture it all happening. The author also included some nice diagrams here as well, and I learned so much!
The only reason I’m going with four stars is because I thought it would be more focused on the physical properties/processes and it was instead focused heavily on the lives of the various scientists who discovered how the atmosphere works. I’m not a huge fan of biographical writing, but if you are then you would really love this because the author put a lot of thought and research into small details.
Chapter 4 on the movement of air masses (which creates the trade winds, westerly winds, and the jet streams) was my favorite chapter because it was so well described that I could picture it all happening. The author also included some nice diagrams here as well, and I learned so much!
September 11, 2022
It took forever for me to read this because I was not into reading for a ridiculous amount if time, but I really enjoyed this book.
Admittedly, some of the things still managed to go over my head, but most everything was dumbed down enough for people like me. :)
Walker included stories and anecdotes related to each chapter's topic that were informative and very interesting, such as Marconi and his role in the Titanic disaster (no, not the sinking part). From the discovery of the atmospheric elements, to horrible hospital conditions, she kept the reader's interest and attention with great variety. If, for some reason, you don't find the topic of one chapter interesting, something completely different will be on hand for the next.
Definitely recommend this book and would read others by the author.
Admittedly, some of the things still managed to go over my head, but most everything was dumbed down enough for people like me. :)
Walker included stories and anecdotes related to each chapter's topic that were informative and very interesting, such as Marconi and his role in the Titanic disaster (no, not the sinking part). From the discovery of the atmospheric elements, to horrible hospital conditions, she kept the reader's interest and attention with great variety. If, for some reason, you don't find the topic of one chapter interesting, something completely different will be on hand for the next.
Definitely recommend this book and would read others by the author.
November 9, 2021
A fascinating journey through the scientific history of the experiments and discoveries of new intelligence about the Earth’s atmosphere. Highlighting scientists through the ages who made note able discoveries about the gasses within our atmosphere, their characteristics, and how they protect us on Earth from the dangers of what lies in Space. Felt it difficult to continue reading at times, the consistent scientific language got a little too much so more frequent diagrams would have been appreciated to break it up a bit more. Particularly enjoyed the section about the Northern Lights. Not for the faint-hearted, some background knowledge of atmospheric physics would have been helpful and perhaps made it a little more enjoyable to read.
December 1, 2018
The book talks about how our understanding of the atmosphere evolved over time. That is all the way from the old thinking that air is an element to modern understandings of layers of the atmosphere, weather patterns etc. The book walks through this evolution by going over events in chronological order.
There were multiple occasions when I wanted to put the book down, catch a friend and tell them about this amazing story of how something was discovered.
There were multiple occasions when I wanted to put the book down, catch a friend and tell them about this amazing story of how something was discovered.
July 21, 2025
This book pops back into my brain once every 6 months because it reminds me that 1) Our earth is shockingly fragile & we've only recently started scratching the surface of what we know about it, 2) Well-meaning scientists are still utterly beholden to the whims of uneducated politicians to protect our planet, 3) Climate Change IS reversible - Rachel Carson is truly an inspirational figure for climate advocacy, and 4) science is genuinely so fucking cool.
September 20, 2018
Great book! I sometimes found the explanations of different phenomenon difficult to understand, but that is ok because this isn't meant to be a textbook. My favorite part of the book was that it went through a brief life story of each scientist which made you feel like you were discovering how the atmosphere worked with them!
October 25, 2024
This was an interesting g book about the people who discovered what our atmosphere is made of. Ranging from early scientists like Joseph Priestley who discovered how to separate oxygen from the atmosphere to William Ferrell who discovered why the trade winds blow the way they do. An interesting and enlightening read.
February 28, 2019
An amazing view on what makes us live, our protection barrier against the dangerous and hostile outer space, the atmosphere, Walker carefully threads the stories of exploration of the layers, composition, behavior, responses, interactions, reactions of the sea above us.
October 20, 2022
A very enjoyable combination of the interesting thin layer of the Earth's atmosphere along with a great description of the history of learning about the atmosphere and those scientists doing these experiments.
May 14, 2025
A really good read with some surprises along the way. It had a slow start, but I encourage you to continue with it as it certainly perks up and you will be surprised how interesting air and our atmosphere really is.
September 15, 2025
Just as you would give pieces of a puzzle to a person trying to place the pieces together, Walker gives readers information about the science and discoveries associated with the atmosphere in chronological order. At the end readers have a wealth of knowledge about air and our atmosphere.
July 14, 2017
Somewhat missed the mark. Loved the concept but the author focused too much on climate change preaching and not enough on atmospheric effects. Wouldn't recommend to others.
July 25, 2018
Excellent collection of stories of scientists contributed in our present understanding of atmospheres we live in.
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