description: What got me started on dust? The little subject suggested itself rather forcefully. A few years ago I was on assignment in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, writing about a dinosaur expedition. The pink-orange clouds of dust that billowed over the desert floor were impossible to ignore. The whirling specks invaded my eyes and nose. They infiltrated the pages of my books. They invaded the depths of my sleeping bag.... Since the day I stood in the Gobi Desert and contemplated the population of dust in the sky, I've come to see the air as a medium and dust as the message.... One purpose of this book is to help readers learn to decipher some of the messages in the air. Our planet sometimes seems too enormous to really comprehend. But perhaps tuning in to the news bulletins issued by some of the planet's smallest reporters can give us a better sense of hos things are going for the whole. Second, I'd be honored if I were able to introduce the reader to his own personal dusts. Never mind that each of us is constantly enveloped in a haze of our own skin flakes and disintegrating clothing. In addition to that cloud each match we strike, each light-switch we flick, and each mile we drive causes more dust to rise into the air. Taken in global quantities, our personal puffs of dust have planet-size consequences. --- excerpts from book's Introduction
language: English
title: The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things
titlecomplete: The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things
genres: Nature, Physics, Science Nature, History, Popular Science, Philosophy, Biology, Audiobook, Science, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 418
publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc.