Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

New York Times science columnist Zimmer (Life’s Edge) delivers an invigorating chronicle of how humanity’s understanding of airborne microbes has evolved from the 19th century through the Covid pandemic. He notes that early scientific efforts to understand airborne life included French chemist Louis Pasteur’s ascent of an Alpine glacier to test whether germs were “everywhere in the air at all times” or varied in density depending on location. Detailing the clever experiments that confirmed germs could spread via airborne particles, Zimmer describes how in 1934, Harvard University scientist William Wells sampled air from a lecture hall as he used a fan to spread sneezing powder through the room. Samples collected after class showed the most bacterial growth, indicating that germs from sneezing students collected not just on surfaces where saliva droplets had fallen but also in the air. The closing chapters bring Zimmer’s larger ambitions into focus as he blends the stimulating history with first-rate reporting on the Covid pandemic, explaining that the medical community’s continued skepticism of Wells’s ideas meant medical professionals accepted only belatedly that Covid spread through airborne particles instead of droplets on surfaces, resulting in mixed messages about the effectiveness of masks that had deadly consequences. This astute history of the scientific debates that shaped the Covid crisis will take readers’ breath away. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Feb.)