The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things - Hardcover

Holmes, Hannah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471377430 ISBN 13: 9780471377436

Publisher: Wiley, 2001

Synopsis

Hannah Holmes A mesmerizing expedition around our dusty world
Some see dust as dull and useless stuff. But in the hands of author Hannah Holmes, it becomes a dazzling and mysterious force; Dust, we discover, built the planet we walk upon. And it tinkers with the weather and spices the air we breathe. Billions of tons of it rise annually into the air--the dust of deserts and forgotten kings mixing with volcanic ash, sea salt, leaf fragments, scales from butterfly wings, shreds of T-shirts, and fireplace soot. Eventually, though, all this dust must settle.
The story of restless dust begins among exploding stars, then treks through the dinosaur beds of the Gobi Desert, drills into Antarctic glaciers, filters living dusts from the wind, and probes the dark underbelly of the living-room couch. Along the way, Holmes introduces a delightful cast of characters--the scientists who study dust. Some investigate its dark side: how it killed off dinosaurs and how its industrial descendents are killing us today. Others sample the shower of Saharan dust that nourishes Caribbean jungles, or venture into the microscopic jungle of the bedroom carpet. Like The Secret Life of Dust, however, all of them unveil the mayhem and magic wrought by little things.
Hannah Holmes (Portland, ME) is a science and natural history writer for the Discovery Channel Online. Her freelance work has been widely published, appearing in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Sierra, National Geographic Traveler, and Escape. Her broadcast work has been featured on Living on Earth and the Discovery Channel Online's Science Live.

About this title

Review

Leave it to an accomplished science writer like Hannah Holmes to unearth so much about so little. Zooming in on one of the great, often unnoticed constants of life on earth--dust, in all its myriad forms--Holmes traverses biology, astronomy, climatology, pathology, and host of other fields to dig up the serious dirt. Because while dust might be vital to life on our planet (and may, in fact, even be responsible for it), this "heartless little brute" could also be responsible for the deaths of millions. And she's not talking about dinosaurs. (Or at least not just yet.)

Tackling her topic roughly by the different roles that dust plays, Holmes alternately devotes chapters to specks of space dust ("They're everywhere," gushes one scientist she interviews, "[y]ou eat them all the time. Any carpet would have 'em"), Oviraptor-burying desert dust, particles of dust that go up instead of down (like sea salt and soot), and foreign pollution that heeds no borders (apparently, "Beijing fog" can be bad enough to cause traffic accidents). She saves the best for last with a couple of chapters on "unsavory characters" and "microscopic monsters," finding danger in the obvious (cigarettes and vermiculite mines) and the not so obvious (hot tubs and humidifiers). And you don't even want to know what's in pig dust.

We're swimming in it, we're covered with it, we might very well have come from it, and--surely, eventually--we'll become it. So we really don't have an excuse for not knowing more about it. Thankfully, Holmes is there, in the field and in the lab, with wide-eyed curiosity and a scientific eye for detail. And, "perhaps by tuning in to the news bulletins issued by some of the planet's smallest reporters," we can all have "a better sense of how things are going for the whole." --Paul Hughes

From the Inside Flap

A mesmerizing expedition around our dusty world

Some see dust as dull stuff, useless at best, and sneeze-inducing at worst. But in the hands of writer Hannah Holmes, dust becomes a dazzling and mysterious force. As Holmes says, dust is a messenger, and air is its medium. And by the end of this fascinating journey through The Secret Life of Dust, we cannot help but agree.

Humble dust, we discover, built the very planet we walk upon. It tinkers with the weather and it spices the air we breathe. Billions of tons of tiny particles rise into the air annually-the dust of deserts and forgotten kings mixing with volcanic ash, sea salt, leaf fragments, scales from butterfly wings, shreds of T-shirts, and fireplace soot. And eventually, of course, all this dust must settle.

The story of restless dust begins among exploding stars, then treks through the dinosaur beds of the Gobi Desert, digs into Antarctic glaciers-and probes the dark underbelly of the living-room couch. And there is good company on this journey: Holmes gathers for us a delightful, and, by necessity, highly inventive, cast of characters-the scientists who study dust. Some investigate its dark side: how it killed off dinosaurs and how its industrial descendants are killing us today. Others sample the shower of Saharan dust that nourishes Caribbean jungles; and still others venture into the microscopic jungle of the bedroom carpet. Like The Secret Life of Dust, all of them unveil the mayhem-and the magic-wrought by little things.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0471377430
• ISBN 13: 9780471377436
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240