Sunday, February 20, 2011

Alchemy of Air

I just finished reading a very riveting book, "The Alchemy of Air" while I was down with the flu Friday and Saturday.

It's the pivotal story of the invention of the machine that extracts nitrogen from the air and makes it possible for farmers to raise enough grain to feed billions of people. Without that German invention, the estimated number of people the world could feed today would be less than 2 billion people.

Of course, nitrogen is also what Germany needed for the production of bombs. What a read!

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