Do these measures simply aim to prevent terrorists crossing sovereign borders, or do they also serve economic and power political reasons? The policies and practices of airport security have radically altered in the past 11 years, being driven by governments, international aviation bodies, security companies, and airport management. Others have suggested (Vaughan-Williams 2009) that other forms of bordering have also become an ordinary part of life: electronic surveillance, exceptional policing powers, profiling.īut the airport is perhaps the border at which the traveller most obviously sees increased security measures: sometimes obtusely intrusive, such as full-body scanning sometimes seemingly comical, such as being made to carry tiny bottles of shampoo in transparent plastic bags. These are the visible ports of entry at the limits of a sovereign territory: where desirables are granted conditional entry and undesirables face a closed door. For as essential as air has been to our philosophical, scientific and technological pursuits, Peter Adey shows that it is through air that the artistic and literary imagination has been lifted.Įxploring the work of established figures such as Marie Curie, Joseph Priestley and John Scott Haldane, as well as lesser-known pioneers, and including perspectives from painting, literature and poetry, this richly illustrated book will appeal to anyone interested in the science as well as the culture of this pervasive, often unregarded yet vital substance.In the aftermath of the 11 th September attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, travellers around the world began to see a massive increase in security measures in airports, ports, train stations, and land borders.

Yet rarely are we aware of air and its incredible properties.Īir is an innovative cultural and scientific history that focuses on our attempts to understand air, to engineer and grapple with it, to make sense of it and find meaning in it. But by managing and manipulating air as a natural resource, humans have been taken to the limits of their survival at the extreme situations of high-altitude mountain peaks and the lows of subterranean worlds. We are immersed in a great ocean of air from internal combustion and jet engines to modern cities with artificial climates, air is remarkable because it is so widespread and at the same time so intimate. A unique, richly illustrated account of our interaction with air through history, exploring science, literature, art and poetryĪir has always been essential to life, from the atmospheric composition that gave life to the forests and gigantic insects of the Carboniferous age some 300 million years ago to the air that fuels the most important technologies today.

Air by Peter Adey