An entertaining history of gases shows science at work in daily life

It’s a Gas
Mark Miodownik (Viking (UK, out now); Mariner (US, 17 September))

WHEN Humphry Davy first gave nitrous oxide to people with tuberculosis in the late 1790s, hoping it might provide a cure, he couldn’t have known that he was also playing a small but important part in culinary history. Yet the links between the two are made clear in Mark Miodownik’s new book on gases, appropriately called It’s a Gas.

While it quickly became apparent to Davy that nitrous oxide had…