Streever has a knack for blending his research and personal experience into an easy-to-read account that is hard to put...
Science, history, and personal adventure come together in a wild and witty exploration of wind.
When Streever, a biologist and nature writer, deals with a natural phenomenon, he does so with aplomb, plunging into the Arctic Ocean in Cold (2009) and walking on coals in Heat (2013). Here, he focuses on wind and sailing. A few years ago, the author purchased the cruising sailboat Rosinante; admittedly “a rank amateur” who is “scared to death of storms,” he set out from Texas to sail to Guatemala with his wife as his sole crew member. Streever calls it a “voyage to understand the wind,” and what happened to Rosinante and its sometimes-hapless, sometimes remarkably lucky crew of two was definitely a learning experience. Interspersed in his tale of their adventure-filled journey are essays on the history of weather predicting; profiles of meteorologists; descriptions of old and new meteorological instruments, from the barometer to weather balloons to satellites; a history of the harnessing of wind energy; and vivid accounts of the impact of moving air—e.g., the mighty hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900, the havoc of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the selection of the landing point for D-Day in 1944, and more. Readers will meet well-known and little-known scientists as the author ranges from the computations of early weather forecaster Lewis Fry Richardson to the chaos theories of mathematician Edward Lorenz (who coined the term “butterfly effect”). They will also acquire plenty of new vocabulary, as the author explains ventifacts, yardangs, einkanters, and dreikanters, all formations shaped by windblown sand.
Streever has a knack for blending his research and personal experience into an easy-to-read account that is hard to put down. Recommended for general readers curious about the natural world as well as budding scientists.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-41060-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.
Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.
The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns. As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him. Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-324-00331-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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