Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather

✍ Scribed by de Villiers, Marq

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780771026454

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Wind is personal for de Villiers, winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. A gust from a ferocious gale in South Africa came close to blowing him over a cliff when he was a child, a fearful experience that invests this articulate study of the history and nature of moving air with notable immediacy. Winds figure in the creation myths of almost all cultures, he notes. But it wasn't until the mid-18th century that scientists began to develop a cogent theory about wind and its relation to weather. Two centuries later, during WWII, high-altitude flyers discovered the jet stream and "a real understanding of winds was, finally, in place." De Villiers has marshaled an absorbing if daunting array of historical, cultural, environmental and scientific facts to detail that wind, despite its destructive power, makes life on Earth possible. But the book's grace notes lie in entertaining did-you-know nuggets. Among them: a great storm that lashed London in 1703 caused windmill blades to rotate so fast that friction set them on fire; Cuban meteorologists, more advanced at the turn of the last century than Americans, warned fruitlessly about the path of the hurricane that devastated Galveston. B&w illus. (Apr.)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–A readable, cogent introduction to wind. Woven throughout the text is the story of Hurricane Ivan, which started as a storm in Africa and gained power as it headed west toward the Americas. Chapter by chapter, the author examines the place of wind in mythology, ancient scientific beliefs about air and wind, composition of the atmosphere, wind scales and patterns, historical and modern weather forecasting, the mechanics of hurricanes, how wind moves pollution around the globe, and technology utilizing wind power. The book includes 12 appendixes, each providing statistics about storms or lists of such events as the Beaufort wind, Saffir-Simpson hurricane, or the Fujita tornado scales. The illustrations, reproductions, and graphs are clear and easy to read. This book could lead students to further research, but it is also entertaining on its own.–_Susan Salpini, formerly at TASIS–The American School in England_
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