A truly astonishing and eminently readable work of chemical detection, provocative, surprising and alive with moments when you just want to tug your neighbor’s sleeve and ask—can you believe this?” — Simon Winchester, bestselling author of The Perfectionists and editor of Lapham's Quarterly
"Dan Levitt's What's Gotten Into You is one fascinating journey, from the fireworks of the Big Bang to the busy life of cells, this is a story of scientific discovery, history, dazzling egos, quiet courage, and pure unexpected insight. In other words, the best kind of story. Don't miss it." — Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poisoner's Handbook and The Poison Squad
"Fascinating . . . . I particularly recommend this book as a gift for high-school and college-age children to spark their interest in science." — Eva Moskowitz, The Wall Street Journal
"Levitt sheds light on the tiniest bits of what humans are made of in his stellar debut . . . . This is marvelous." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Mind-broadening and thought-provoking.” — Boston Globe
"Science and history documentarian Dan Levitt’s upcoming book, What's Gotten Into You evokes a series of striking and often forceful images in tracing how our cells, elements, atoms and subatomic particles all found their way to our brains and bones and bodies . . . . it's a pretty mind-blowing book to read." — Bryn Nelson, CNN
"[Levitt] keeps matters simple enough that science buffs will be satisfied and average readers will learn a great deal . . . . Lively, illuminating popular science." — Kirkus Reviews
“This documentary effort is truly ambitious. He investigates the various chemical elements that make up the human body, then tracks them all the way back to the big bang.” — Library Journal
“In What’s Gotten Into You, Dan Levitt delivers a survey of life’s building blocks that’s intelligent, accessible and just sheer fun.” — BookPage
"The 14 billion years story of how the primaeval seeds of matter become you and your breakfast—easily digested." — Frank Close, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics, Oxford University and author of Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass
". . . brilliant popular science." — Undark
"If someone asks you 'Where are you from?', thinking Europe maybe, or China or Africa, some ancient village somewhere, this book tells the deeper story, that you aren't local. You come from everywhere, from the air around you, from the sunshine, from rocks in your solar system, from comets, from distant stars that blew up long ago, from teeny mushroom threads boring into boulders. You and every atom in you have an origin story that will make you feel very small, very lucky and very magnificent and that, says Dan Levitt, is What's Gotten Into You." — Robert Krulwich, cofounder of Radiolab
“Great book! Big Bang to vitamins! It brings home how we go about our daily lives with such a narrow and myopic view of the world. It’s refreshing to take a step back to see the very large, very small, and very old. What we know of the nuts and bolts of the universe is so far outside our everyday experiences.” — Paul Kenrick, Paleobotanist, Natural History Museum, London
“This book is sheer pleasure, a grand exploration through space and time from the expanding universe to the molecules in living cells. As told through the experiences of the men and women who made the discoveries, this is also a beautifully human story—a marvelous read in every way!” — Ruth Lewin Sime, author of Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics
“In this breezy ramble through multiple scientific domains, Dan Levitt takes the popular pursuit of family ancestry to cosmic extremes.” — Laurence Marschall, Natural History
"The book is an immense journey and a deep dive into an endless and endlessly fascinating subject." — proto.life
“There were many moments when I felt a deep sense of awe at the stranger than fiction journey that our planet has been on.” — GreenSpirit, UK
2022-10-28
How the elements of the human body came to be.
In his debut book, writer and documentarian Levitt hits the ground running with news that a 150-pound human body contains 60 elements, including “enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal, enough salt to fill a saltshaker, enough chlorine to disinfect several backyard swimming pools, and enough iron to make a three-inch nail.” On the open market, our body chemicals would bring about $2,000. To explain how they assembled into a human requires an explanation of life itself, which demands understanding the history of our planet. Many authors who write about our elemental makeup deliver this in an introductory chapter, but Levitt offers an entertaining history of the entire universe, paying most attention to humans in the introduction and final chapters. He keeps matters simple enough that science buffs will be satisfied and average readers will learn a great deal. The immense heat caused by the Big Bang permitted almost nothing to exist except the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium. After at least 100 million years of expansion and cooling, the two condensed into stars whose heat and pressure squeezed them into heavier elements—and even heavier ones when aging stars exploded. After more billions of years, galaxies and planetary systems formed, including the Earth 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists have no idea how life began, but Levitt’s page-turning account emphasizes how quickly it happened: within a few hundred million years. Life here and on other planets may be inevitable. Earthly life was bacterial for most of its existence. Plants came later, and they still rule the world, making up 80% of its biomass. Animals brought up the rear, eventually evolving into humans. The author notes that the process of completing this book “has been a continual source of wonder, stupefaction, exhilaration, and gratitude.” Readers will share those feelings.
Lively, illuminating popular science.
