THIS is a remarkable and even exciting book: the title’s exclamation mark is well justified. Gasp! starts with the details of the astonishing feat. The newborn child, after months submerged in fluid, instantly switches to respiration, taking the first breath of the half-a-billion or so that we take in an average life.
It’s an impressive introduction to the rest of the book, which deals with such questions as why the air is a mixture instead of forming layers of nitrogen, oxygen and so on, travels into the adventures of space exploration, considers myth, religion and evolution, and ends in the modern world of air pollution. Vividly…
