A Sideways Look at Clouds (eBook)

Maria Ruth (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
224 Seiten
Mountaineers Books (Verlag)
978-1-68051-119-2 (ISBN)

Infos

A natural history, filled with intrigue and humor, of our ubiquitous yet utterly fascinating clouds

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"Here's somebody who is down-to-earth enough to talk to the 99.9 percent of us who walk underneath clouds all the time, but don't have a clue about how they form, why they assume different shapes and different colors, and what makes them precipitate." -- Kitsap Sun


Silver Nautilus Book Award in Science and Cosmology

• Written by a critically-acclaimed natural-history author


• Shares author’s fun journey to understanding clouds


• Written for the curious—but non-science—minded

Author Maria Mudd Ruth fell in love with clouds the same way she stumbles into most passions: madly and unexpectedly. A Sideways Look at Clouds is the story of her quite accidental infatuation with and education about the clouds above.


When she moved to the soggy Northwest a decade ago, Maria assumed that locals would know everything there was to know about clouds, in the same way they talk about salmon, tides, and the Seahawks. Yet in her first two years of living in Olympia, Washington, she never heard anyone talk about clouds—only the rain. Puzzled by this lack of cloud savvy, she decided to create a 10-question online survey and sent it to everyone she knew. Her sample size of 67 people included men and women, new friends in Olympia, family on the East Coast, outdoorsy and indoorsy types, professional scientists, and liberal arts majors like herself. The results showed that while people knew a little bit about clouds, most were like her—they had a hard time identifying clouds or remembering their names. As adults, they had lost their curiosity and sense of wonder about clouds and were, essentially, not in the habit of looking up.


A Sideways Look at Clouds acknowledges the challenges of understanding clouds and so uses a very steep and bumpy learning curve—the author’s—as its plot line. The book is structured around the ten words used in most definitions of a cloud: “a visible mass of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the earth.” A captivating story teller, Maria blends science, wonder, and humor to take the scenic route through the clouds and encourages readers to chart their own rambling, idiosyncratic course.


Whether you are outside under the clouds, inside planning your next adventure, or curled up anywhere with a good book, A Sideways Look at Clouds will engage, inform, and inspire.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.8.2017
• Zusatzinfo: 10 b&w photos
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Gewicht: 522 g
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Weltraum / Astronomie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: cumulus clouds • field guide to clouds • natural history of clouds • nimbus clouds • types of clouds
• ISBN-10: 1-68051-119-X / 168051119X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-68051-119-2 / 9781680511192