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Rain : a natural and cultural history / Cynthia Barnett.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Crown Publishers, [2015]Edition: First editionDescription: 355 pages ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0804137099 (hardcover)
  • 0804137110 (pbk.)
  • 9780804137096 (hardcover)
  • 9780804137119 (pbk.)
Subject(s):
Contents:
Origins -- Elemental rain. Cloudy with a chance of civilization ; Drought, deluge, and devilry ; Praying for rain -- Chance of rain. The weather watchers ; The articles of rain -- American rain. Founding forecaster ; Rain follows the plow ; The rainmakers -- Capturing the rain. Writers on the storm ; The scent of rain ; City rains -- Mercurial rain. Strange rain ; And the forecast calls for change -- Waiting for rain.
Summary: 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 frog and fish rains--with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. 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.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 551.577 B261 Available 33111007995497
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive.
 
It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book 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 frog and fish rains--with the human story of our ambition 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 a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.

-- Gold Medal Winner, Florida Book Award

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Origins -- Elemental rain. Cloudy with a chance of civilization ; Drought, deluge, and devilry ; Praying for rain -- Chance of rain. The weather watchers ; The articles of rain -- American rain. Founding forecaster ; Rain follows the plow ; The rainmakers -- Capturing the rain. Writers on the storm ; The scent of rain ; City rains -- Mercurial rain. Strange rain ; And the forecast calls for change -- Waiting for 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 frog and fish rains--with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. 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.

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