When you do, after reading this book you will be vividly aware of what is passing through your nostrils and into your lungs. You will have learned where the air you're breathing orginated, what assaults it's been subject to, and what you may have to do to improve it. The air you, and your children, breathe needs attention. This passionately written account examines the history of air, the people who have investigated it and the problems we're confronting in keeping it breathable. Although the story grows increasingly grim as it progresses, Sherman finds ways of offering some hope and solutions.Air means breathing and Sherman laments his failure to see his son's initial breath. There were distractions - a Caesarean birth and the condition of Sherman's wife. A forgiveable lapse, one hopes. From that incident, however, the author derived a deeper interest in the air we, and his wife and son, respire. Air, transparent and ephemeral, still captured the interest and imagination of early thinkers. Aristotle's famous dictum of the four basic "elements" placed air after earth in importance. Few doubted that air was essential to life, however. Although the air was thought to hold things like spirits and deities, actual investigation of air didn't come about until the Enlightenment. Shedding the myths, people like Lavoisier, Dalton and others detected "new aire" and the idea of air comprised of several gases began to emerge. More than one experimenter put his life at risk investigating the properties of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Even with the new studies, the long-standing idea of the air containing "phlogiston" as evidence of burning was not easily dismissed.Although all life has its effect on air, whether taking it in for use or expelling waste gases through breathing and less polite means, Sherman is most concerned with humanity's influence on our "breathable sphere". He offers a long discourse on the impact of various forms of smoke, particularly coal. In the Industrial Revolution, coal smoke was a sign of "progress", new wealth, restructured society with urban growth and gainful employment. That attitude carried across the Atlantic to the USA as industrialisation progressed there. As smoke and various other pollutants began choking the cities, objectors arose. Movements to curb smoke were organised, with minimal success. Britain's problem was exacerbated by the onset of fog. When combined with coal dust and smoke, the results were devastating. A Public Health Act was one of the first serious attempts to address the problem. Although the Act listed many noxious vapours, enforcement was lax and largely ineffectual.With similar problems emerging in the United States, opposition grew apace. Again, smoke and "progress" equated. There, however, the incipient women's rights movements made clean air one of its subsidiary themes. Concern for public health generally and children's health in particular, brought many women into the fold. One businessman, W.P. Rend, declared smoke to be the "incense burning on the alter of industry". With other industrialists and many politicians echoing this sentiment, those seeking cleaner air through legislation faced firm resistance. While some progress was achieved, the onset of the automobile created a fresh problem. The USA's love affair with cars has been well documented. Sherman traces the rise of "smog" in the Los Angeles basin and the halting attempts to curtail it. One thing was certain, people weren't about to reduce car use and the problem could only be addressed at the factory with new means of curbing emitted compounds. The impact of such regulation hasn't kept the USA from being the planet's greatest polluter.Sherman's answer is necessarily a little weak. Although he's covered the Western world, it is his own nation that provides the readership he wishes to convince. He wants his fellow-countrymen to be aware they inhale 19 thousand times per day. "What enters your nostrils and lungs each time?", he queries. Think of the dust, mites, bacteria and chemicals carried on that air into your body. He reminds us that there are delicate membranes in the lung, which, if spread out fully would cover a football field. That very expanse means a thin membrane easily affronted. It takes little effort to damage the lung. And those inside your rib cage can only be taken care of by their owner. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]