To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate - Softcover

Murphy, Dallas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465005101 ISBN 13: 9780465005109

Publisher: Basic Books, 2008

Synopsis

In To Follow the Water, critically acclaimed author Dallas Murphy artfully recasts the story of human expansion and cultural development with the ocean playing the central role. Applying a novelist's eye for detail and a historian's drive for perspective, he connects the great ages of ocean exploration from Columbus, Magellan, and Cook to the development of modern oceanography. Letting scientists speak for themselves at sea and ashore, Murphy learns that oceanographers are not only observing and explaining the ocean's dynamic, global circulation, but also employing their skills, tools, and techniques to understand and predict climate change. To Follow the Water is an enlightening and entertaining voyage of discovery spanning the evolution of our relationship to the ocean, first as an impediment to human ambition, then as the pathway for Western expansion, and now, most important, as a subject of scientific study with immediate relevance to our future.

About this title

About the Author:

Dallas Murphy is a novelist, playwright, and marine journalist. His plays have been produced Off Broadway, and his series of three novels featuring the reluctant sleuth Artie Deemer have been critically acclaimed. His most recent book, an account of Cape Horn, Rounding the Horn, was published in 2004 by Basic Books. He lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

Marine journalist Murphy, a life-long "dock rat," rescues physical oceanography from dull classroom lectures (a sore spot among aspiring oceanographers) with this romantic, accessible work that makes difficult concepts like water-mass movement engrossing and inspiring. Chronicling his seafaring adventures with physical oceanographers ("fizzos") from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Murphy has done an enormous service for general readers interested in the science and politics of climate change by asking and, more importantly, re-asking detailed questions until he can produce jargon-free explanations. Organized around the history of oceanography, beginning with Viking, Portuguese and Spanish explorers, Murphy recounts the gradual discovery of the North Atlantic gyre and how this influenced the history of New World colonization, the groundbreaking work of 20th century fizzos such as Henry Stommel, Walter Munk and Maurice Ewing, and the latest developments in the research they begat. Along the way, Murphy provides a fascinating look at the shipboard research experience: the life of a scientist at sea, the use of instruments and a myriad of other details. Murphy's conversational style can make for some overlong sentences, but his background research is close to impeccable; unfortunately, a less-than-thorough editing job overlooks some obvious mistakes (as in the passage misidentifying "phytoplankton" and "zooplankton") and fails to reference the well-chosen charts and illustrations within the text.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0465005101
• ISBN 13: 9780465005109
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296