The many faces of carbon

摘要

Eric Roston is a journalist and science writer who covered the 9/11 attacks as a reporter for Time magazine. In his fascinating book The Carbon Age, Roston weaves together the story of the element carbon, mining his facts largely from electronic research databases, particularly Google Scholar. Providing for the layman the connective tissue' of a vast array of subdisciplines - encompassing anthropology, astrophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geology, mathematics, nuclear synthesis, nucleic acids, nanotechnology, palaeobotany, phylogeny and more - this US-centric monograph is a success, especially in dealing with climate change. Roston's approach calls to mind the Christmas lectures given by Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1848-49, and again in 1860-61, entitled "The Chemical History of a Candle". Faraday used the candle example as a door opening onto many other areas of science: "so wonderful are the varieties of outlet which it offers into the various departments of philosophy.