The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

by Thomas Hager

The goal of alchemy was to distill the pure soul of nature from the rough, chaotic stuff of the earth, to find the spirit hidden in matter. God was in everything, even the rocks, and alchemists believed their work was a way to understand the workings of the divine. They