WONDERS OF DUST

Tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, grain elevator explosions, car exhaust, urban air pollution, and the Dust Bowl storms of the 1930s: McFall considers them all as dust phenomena, usually starting with a particular disaster or problem and then detailing how that type of dust is formed, how it travels, and what it does. A later chapter discusses dust-caused lung diseases ranging from asbestiosis and black lung to hay fever. McFall starts off smartly with comments from Apollo astronauts on the ubiquitous dust on the moon, and she ends, after a look at astronomic dust, with a full chapter on the dust on the moon and on Mars. This vast range doesn't allow her to go deeply into any of the phenomena, and it leaves the book without a clear center. But for the middling curious it offers a different, freer perspective of a sort that the usual curricular approach inhibits.