On the face of it, just how anybody could find the fortitude to write an entire book on dust is quite beyond comprehension. Rub your finger along the nearest sideboard – yeah, that’s the stuff. Dust. But when you consider that our entire solar system and the planets within are all the result of dust particles smashing together, then author Jay Owens’ reasoning becomes clear.
The result of this reasoning, Dust: The Modern World In A Trillion Particles, is a very interesting and entertaining history of the disease, environmental disasters and all other dust- and air-related factors that have shaped the modern world. Owens puts forward the argument that while the discovery of fossil fuels shaped humankind’s progress, its continued use will also contribute to its downfall – using well-investigated examples such as the remains of the Aral Sea, the great plague of London and the wasting away of the ice sheets in Greenland as evidence that mankind may ultimately prove to be the authors of their own demise.
Dust serves as a stark reminder that everything which has been achieved, can be brought to dust once again. Food for thought wrapped up nicely in a highly absorbing book.
Dust: The Modern World In A Trillion Particles, Jay Owens (Hodder & Stoughton)
Price: £25. Info: here
words CHRIS ANDREWS