By Andrew Demillo
A history of aerobiology would normally be a book that would have little interest beyond the scientific community. But in “Air-Borne: The Hidden History of Life that we breathe”, Carl Zimmer transforms the subject into something that reads like a combination of detective stories and horror.
Zimmer creates a very relevant and captivating story of the study of the air which extends to Louis Pasteur holding a glass globe on a glacier with scientists who run to fight Covid-19 during the pandemic.
The book shows which vital role The science of airborne life has played in the fight against flu, flu and other diseases. Zimmer also presents readers with figures little known to the mass public who played a role in the evolution of the field.
They include William Firth Wells, a pioneer in aerobiology whose work has been crucial to understand how airborne diseases spread, especially during the pandemic.
Zimmer’s book also shows how the work of Wells and other scientists was distorted in something that was used as a basis for biological weapons.
Using the epidemic among a choir in Washington’s state, Zimmer describes frustrating in the air and frustrating rifts among health officials during the pandemic to address the public that the virus was in the air.
As Zimmer says, the pandemic “made the ocean of gas which surrounds us visible”. His book is a key guide to understand this ocean.
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