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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:  
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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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