We not only live in the air, we live because of it. At ground level air transforms miraculously; it wraps our planet in a blanket of warmth, while the outer layer of our atmosphere soaks up violent flares from the sun. In this fascinating celebration of the Earth's fragile atmosphere, Gabrielle Walker traces a journey of groundbreaking scientific discovery from the first experiments in the Renaissance to recent findings in space.

Author Biography

Gabrielle Walker has a PhD in chemistry from Cambridge and has taught at both Cambridge and Princeton universities. She is a consultant to New Scientist, contributes frequently to BBC radio and writes for many newspapers and magazines. The author of Snowball Earth and presenter of BBC Radio 4's 'Planet Earth Under Threat', she lives in London and France.