It's a Gas: The Sublime and Elusive Elements That Expand Our World

The New York Times bestselling author of Stuff Matters presents a rollicking guided tour through the history of technology and the secret lives of gases: the magnificent, strange, and fascinating substances that shape our world.

Gases are all around us—they fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars, and warm our atmosphere. Often invisible and sometimes odorless, these ubiquitous substances—the focus of this fascinating work of popular science—are also the least understood materials in our world, and always have been.

It wasn’t long ago that gases were seen as the work of ancient spirits: the sudden closing of a door after a change in airflow signaled a ghost’s presence. Scientists and engineers have struggled with their own gaseous demons. The development of high-pressure steam power in the eighteenth century literally blew away some researchers, ushering in a new era for both safety regulations and mass transit. And carbon dioxide, that noxious by-product of fossil fuel consumption, gave rise to modern civilization. Its warming properties known for centuries, it now spells ruin for our fragile atmosphere.

In It’s a Gas, bestselling materials scientist Mark Miodownik chronicles twelve gases and technologies that shaped human history. From hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and neon to laughing gas, steam, and even wind, the story of gases is the story of our invisible world, the space where science and belief collide, and of the elusive limits of human understanding.

In this surprising tour of accessible chemistry, you’ll discover the stories behind:

• Steam Power: How harnessing the force of condensing steam didn’t just save miners’ lives but kickstarted the Industrial Revolution and continues to generate most of our electricity.
• Early Anaesthesia: The strange journey of nitrous oxide from a Victorian party drug, lampooned in the press, to a cornerstone of modern pain relief.
• Climate Change Science: Why carbon dioxide, a gas that helped give rise to civilization, now threatens our fragile atmosphere and drives the conversation about our planet’s future.
• Science vs. Superstition: From ancient spirits in the air to modern denial, a look at how our quest to understand the invisible world has always been a battleground for belief.

Mark Miodownik is professor of materials and society at University College London, where he is also director of the Institute of Making. He is the author of Stuff Matters, a New York Times bestseller which won the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award for Books and the Royal Society Winton Prize, and Liquid Rules, a finalist for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize. Mark is a frequent guest on podcasts and NPR, hosts regular shows on the BBC, and was chosen by the Times as one of the one hundred most influential scientists in the UK.