Uncover The Alchemy Of Air: A Jewish Genius, A Doomed Tycoon, And The Scientific Discovery That Fed The World But Fueled The Rise Of Hitler Composed By Thomas Hager Categorized In Printable Format

learned so much from this bookabout chemistry and history and humans who aim to do good but whose efforts turn out to result in both good and unspeakable evil.
Hager tells a very important story engagingly, unblinkingly, And he follows the story with an epilogue that suggests we have larger concerns than simple 'global warming, ' Our fertilizersomething that is used for goodis possibly doing the most damage of all to our environment even while it's feeding the world, I will be thinking about this book and recommending it for a long time to come, The story of how to extract nitrogen from the air, leading to the development of artificial fertilizer as well as to explosives, The process developed also made possible artificial gas derived from coal, The focus is on the two main players: Fritz Haber, who got the process of extracting nitrogen to the point here it was commercially viable, and Carl Bosch, who scaled it up to industrial levels.
Both would go on to collect Nobel Prizes both would be severely disillusioned by the Nazi regime,

The story moved along at a brisk clip, and I learned more than I would ever have expected to about agriculture! The chemistry was frequently over my head, although I understood the gist.


I enjoyed this very much more than I had expected to, Tragic genius, cuttingedge science, and the discovery that changed billions of livesincluding your own,

At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global disaster: Mass starvation was about to become a reality, A call went out to the worlds scientists to find a solution,

This is the story of the two men who found it: brilliant, selfimportant Fritz Haber and reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch, Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built citysized factories, and saved millions of lives,

But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying, The HaberBosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and explosives that killed millions during the two world wars, Both men were vilified during their lives both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically,

The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of a discovery that changed the way we grow food and the way we make warand that promises to continue shaping our lives in fundamental and dramatic ways.


A wellwritten and pageturning history of the HaberBosch process: pulling nitrogen out of the atmosphere and transforming it into ammonia for fertilizer or explosives.
Hager balances biography, science, industry and politics in an engaging and exiting narrative,

I'm flipflopping betweenandstars, Who knew fertilizer could be so interesting This book is about the chemistry and history of fertilizer, including the discovery of saltpeter and then the geniuses who figured out how to pull nitrogen out of the air and efficiently apply it to get vastly higher yields from fields, thus feeding the world.
The author weaves this science and engineering with the biographies of thesebrilliant Germans, a scientist and an engineer, along with the history of the time spanning preWWI through WW.
Unsurprisingly, their situations went from patriotic Germans eager to support their country to angst over their roles in furthering Hitler's deadly agenda, Thesewere interesting characters, one being a Jew with a keen desire to be accepted as a valuable member of German society, the other an engineer who lived and breathed his work and dreamed of it benefitting the world.
WWII is rough on these guys,
Very well written. I couldn't put it down,
The Alchemy of Air is brilliant science writing, which means that it reads more like a bracing adventure story than a science lecture,

At the turn of theth century, an impending crisis faces the world: mass starvation, The earth simply can't yield enough food to keep up, The only men that can save the world are chemists tasked with the impossible: distilling nitrogen from the air,

Thomas Hager's writing pulses with intrigue and sweeps us away into a cast of characters that includes manure tycoons, South American swashbucklers, and German powerchemists, And it takes you into the most unexpected settings: Chilean guana fields and citysized factories, to name a couple,

It's stunning to think that this story was always right in front of our noses, but Alchemy of Air demonstrates how a great writer can reveal a hidden world in our midst.
What's just as impressive is that you end up absorbing a perplexing amount of science particularly chemistry

without even realizing it, Alchemy of Air is a dazzling feat of story tellingput it on your mustread list,
It's surprising how interesting a book about fertilizer can be, More specifically, this book tells the story of the HaberBosch process used to manufacture synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by turning atmospheric nitrogen into a form that can be used by plant life.
If you believe this to be not very important consider this nearlyof the nitrogen found inside your bodyand every other living body in the worldoriginated from the HaberBosch process.
It's true, from half to one third of the people alive today simply wouldn't be here if it weren't for synthetic fertilizers because there wouldn't be enough foodeven if everybody ate low on the food chain i.
e no meat.

But there's another side to the HaberBosch process, It allowed World War I to last about two years longer than it would have otherwise because it can also be used to make gun powder and explosives.
Germany had no access to the raw materials needed to make more explosives without the HaberBosch process and without it they simply would have exhausted their supplies, Then later in World War II technologies similar to the HaberBosch process allowed Germany to make gasoline from coal, Since Germany had limited access to alternative sources it's hard to imagine how they could have fueled their mechanized army otherwise,

This book also contains an interesting human interest story about the chemist Fritz Haber and engineer Carl Bosch as their careers first received international praise and recognition only to die later as broken men.
Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel prize infor development of the chemical process, and Carl Bosch was awarded the Nobel prize infor overcoming the engineering problems posed by the largescale, continuousflow, highpressure technology.


Fritz Haber's story is particularly tragic since he was Jewish, Up until the time of Hitler, Haber was an ultra German patriot, and even converted to Christianity in an effort to make himselfGerman, He was an enthusiastic proponent of the use of poison gas during World War I, He found himself to be a man without a country when the Nazis took over, He died a broken man inin Switzerland,

Carl Bosch was an engineer and business man first and tended to be disrespectful of Nazi politics, The IG Farben Board promoted him to a powerless position to keep him out of publicand Naziview, He began to drink excessively, his health began to fail, and he lost interest in living, Before he died inhe confided to his son that he foresaw the destruction of Germany,

There's also an ecological side to this story, Since the agricultural use of nitrogen is generally less thatefficient, the use of nitrogen has loaded the world's environment with fixed nitrogen beyond its natural state and has disrupted biological habitats with excessive nutrients leading to algae blooms and eutrophication of lakes.
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