A natural history of rain, told through a lyrical blend of science, cultural history, and human dramaIt is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of rain.Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of colored rains—with the human story of our attempts to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume.Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is an audiobook for everyone who has ever experienced it.
An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes.The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen...
Sitting on the beach on a sunny summer day, we enjoy the steady advance and retreat of the waves. In the water, enthusiastic waders jump and shriek with pleasure when a wave hits them. But where do these waves come from? How are they formed and why ...
In Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean, writer, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White takes listeners across the globe to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides.
In the Arctic, White shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for...
A Silent Spring for oceans, written by "the Rachel Carson of the fish world" (The New York Times)
Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts-one of the wo...
From bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes a treasure trove of answers to questions about our world.Was there an Atlantis?What's the smallest country in the world?What's the difference between a jungle and a rain forest?Kenneth C. Davis, author ...
A New York Times-bestselling author explains how the physical world shaped the history of our speciesWhen we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined ou...
The lives of millions will be changed after it breaks, and yet so few people understand it, or even realize it runs through their backyard. Dvorak reveals the San Andreas Fault's fascinating history-and its volatile future. It is a prominent geologi...
Here is the epic story of the centuries-long search to understand the tide: from Aristotle, said to have drowned himself when he failed to figure out the Greek tides, to the pioneering investigations into the role of the moon by Galileo and Newton, ...
On a hot morning in May 1999, three Brazilian garimpeiros(small-scale miners) found a large pink diamond in the muddy waters of the Abaete River, a discovery that captivated the diamond trade. Beginning with this dramatic and revealing story, M...
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