Caesar’s last breath: the epic story of the air around us

Julius Caesar was infamously murdered in 44BC on the floor of the Senate by his colleagues, and with his last breath, dispersed 25 sextillion (2.5 × 1022) molecules into the atmosphere. In any given breath you take, the odds are you’re breathing some of them in. Sam Kean’s book Caesar’s last breath discusses the make-up of the air around us, and how its components have come to quite literally shape our planet. In the opening chapters, Kean explains with style and humour how our atmosphere came to be, before moving on to how humans have interacted with the air, and finally, how we are affecting the atmosphere.