The Little Book of Weather - Adam Scaife ***

Many of us from the UK of a certain age will remember a series of little hardback books called The Observer's book of... whatever - this new series from Princeton University Press harks back to this format, in this case taking on the weather. As yet, every other book in the series is on a type of organism, ranging from beetles and dinosaurs to trees - so it's interesting to see if the format works for a rather different topic.

The structure is a familiar one in illustrated book series of two-page spreads, covering a handful of topics under each of a range of categories - in this case 12 sections. Unfortunately, for me this felt like a book that should have had far bigger pages condensed down to a point where it might have been beneficial to provide it with a free magnifying glass. The text was very small indeed.

This is a shame, as much of the content is interesting, cramming in more information than is common in the illustrated spreads style. I found the order of the sections somewhat arbitrary - so, for instance, folklore which predates the science doesn't turn up until section 10, and similarly forecasting which is so central to our interest in the weather comes quite late. But some of the sections were entertainingly unexpected - so, for instance, there's one on weather and historical events (I was a bit disappointed not to have the Spanish Armada as one of these). Another covers 'curious facts' from space weather to gigantism in insects.

Of course, all the basics are there too - from weather phenomena to climate change. Perhaps the only significant omission was attempts at weather control (which would have been timely given conspiracy theories over recent US hurricanes).

It's a nice little book... just noticeably too little.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

Search This Blog