A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the
discovery that changed billions of lives--including your own.
At the dawn of the 20th century, humanity was facing global disaster.
Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was
about to become a reality. A call went out to the world's scientists to
find a solution. This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally
flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and
the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch.
Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built
city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of
lives. Their invention continues to feed us today; without it, more than
two billion people would starve.
But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The
Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and high
explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were
vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died
tragically. Today we face the other unintended consequences of their
discovery--massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.
The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of
two master scientists who saved the world only to lose everything and of
the unforeseen results of a discovery that continue to shape our lives
in the most fundamental and dramatic of ways.
