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27 books match the query 'Weather'

cover of A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary

A Change in the Weather

Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary

Geoffrey Jacques

University of Massachusetts Press, 2009

This book explores the impact of African American culture on modernist poetic language by placing black literature and culture at the center of an inquiry into the genealogy of avant-garde poetics. Geoffrey Jacques looks at how blackface minstrelsy, ragtime, vernacular languages, advertising copy, Freud's idea of the Uncanny, vaudeville, the cliché, and Tin Pan Alley–style song all influenced modernist poetry. In a key insight, Jacques points out that the black urban community in the United States did not live in ghettos during the years before World War I, but in smaller enclaves spread out among the general population. This circumstance helped catalyze African American culture's dramatic and surprising impact on the emergent avant-garde. By using a wide range of theoretical tools, Jacques poses new questions about literary, cultural, and social history, the history and structure of modernist poetic language, canon formation, and the history of criticism.This contribution to the ongoing debate over early twentieth-century culture presents modernism as an interracial, cross-cultural project, arguing for a new appreciation of the central role black culture played within it. Writers and artists whose works are discussed include Marianne Moore, Charles Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, Wallace Stevens, James A. Bland, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gertrude Stein, Bert Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, Samuel Beckett, W. C. Handy, Hart Crane, and Clement Greenberg.
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cover of America's Deadliest Twister: The Tri-State Tornado of 1925

America's Deadliest Twister

The Tri-State Tornado of 1925

Geoff Partlow

Southern Illinois University Press, 2014

Winner, ISHS Certificate of Excellence, 2015

Disaster relief as we know it did not exist when the deadliest tornado in U.S. history gouged a path from southeast Missouri through southern Illinois and into southwestern Indiana. The tri-state tornado of 1925 hugged the ground for 219 miles, generated wind speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour, and killed 695 people. Drawing on survivor interviews, public records, and newspaper archives, America’s Deadliest Twister offers a detailed account of the storm, but more important, it describes life in the region at that time as well as the tornado’s lasting cultural impact, especially on southern Illinois.

Author Geoff Partlow follows the storm from town to town, introducing us to the people most affected by the tornado, including the African American population of southern Illinois. Their narratives, along with the stories of the heroes who led recovery efforts in the years following, add a hometown perspective to the account of the storm itself.

In the discussion of the aftermath of the tornado, Partlow examines the lasting social and economic scars in the area, but he also looks at some of the technological firsts associated with this devastating tragedy. Partlow shows how relief efforts in the region began to change the way people throughout the nation thought about disaster relief, which led to the unified responses we are familiar with today.
 

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cover of An Observer's Guide to Clouds and Weather: A Northeastern Primer on Prediction

An Observer's Guide to Clouds and Weather

A Northeastern Primer on Prediction

Toby Carlson, Paul Knight, and Celia Wyckoff

American Meteorological Society, 2014

Today, most people look down when they want to check the weather, peeking at cell phones or popping open a browser, instead of looking up at one of the most accessible weather predictors of all—the sky. Knowing what the atmosphere has in store without relying on technology can be a gratifying experience, and now with An Observer’s Guide to Clouds and Weather, it is also one that is easy to learn.

This informative and accessible guide walks readers through the basics of making weather predictions through understanding cloud types and sky formations. It explains, in nontechnical terms, the science behind the weather, connecting fundamental meteorological concepts with the processes that shape weather patterns. Readers will learn how to develop their powers of observation and hone their ability to make quick forecasts without complicated tools. Whether you're an amateur weather enthusiast or a beginning meteorology student, An Observer’s Guide to Clouds and Weather will help anyone who prefers looking up to looking it up.
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cover of British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment

British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment

Jan Golinski

University of Chicago Press, 2007

Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the eighteenth century from the systematic recording of the weather, and how it was deployed in discussions of the health and welfare of the population. Enlightened intellectuals hailed climate’s role in the development of civilization but acknowledged that human existence depended on natural forces that would never submit to rational control.

Reading the Enlightenment through the ideas, beliefs, and practices concerning the weather, Jan Golinski aims to reshape our understanding of the movement and its legacy for modern environmental thinking. With its combination of cultural history and the history of science, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment counters the claim that Enlightenment progress set humans against nature, instead revealing that intellectuals of the age drew characteristically modern conclusions about the inextricability of nature and culture.

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cover of China Lake: A Journey into the Contradicted Heart of a Global Climate Catastrophe

China Lake

A Journey into the Contradicted Heart of a Global Climate Catastrophe

Barret Baumgart

University of Iowa Press, 2017

Barret Baumgart’s literary debut presents a haunting and deeply personal portrait of civilization poised at the precipice, a picture of humanity caught between its deepest past and darkest future. In the fall of 2013, during the height of California’s historic drought, Baumgart toured the remote military base, NAWS China Lake, near Death Valley, California. His mother, the survivor of a recent stroke, decided to come along for the ride. She hoped the alleged healing power of the base’s ancient Native American hot springs might cure her crippling headaches. Baumgart sought to debunk claims that the military was spraying the atmosphere with toxic chemicals to control the weather. What follows is a discovery that threatens to sever not only the bonds between mother and son but between planet Earth and life itself.

Stalking the fringes of Internet conspiracy, speculative science, and contemporary archaeology, Baumgart weaves memoir, military history, and investigative journalism in a dizzying journey that carries him from the cornfields of Iowa to drought-riddled California, from the Vietnam jungle to the caves of prehistoric Europe and eventually the walls of the US Capitol, the sparkling white hallways of the Pentagon, and straight into the contradicted heart of a worldwide climate emergency. 
 
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cover of Climate of Alaska

Climate of Alaska

Martha Shulski and Gerd Wendler

University of Alaska Press, 2007

Those of us in the lower forty-eight states tend to think of Alaska as an unremitting wasteland of frigid temperatures, ice, and snow. But in reality, because of its immense size and its position at the edge of the Arctic, Alaska has a remarkably varied and complex climate.

Replete with striking photos, maps, and charts, The Climate of Alaska presents a detailed picture of what to expect in this state of climate extremes. From the 40-below temperatures of the Interior to the twenty-four hours of daylight in a northern summer, Alaska’s climate presents challenges to its inhabitants on a daily basis. Readers will find   accessible descriptions of temperature, humidity, precipitation, and climate change that will enrich a visit to the state and provide insight on the living conditions of this fascinating place.
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cover of Climates of Hunger: Mankind and the World's Changing Weather

Climates of Hunger

Mankind and the World's Changing Weather

Reid A. Bryson

University of Wisconsin Press, 1979

In recent years, world climate changes have drawn more attention than at any other time in history. What we once called "crazy weather," just a few years ago, is now beginning to be seen as a part of a logical and, in part, predictable pattern, an awesome natural force that we must deal with if man is to avoid disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Climates of Hunger is a book of paramount importance for our time. It will be essential reading not only for professionals in the field—including agricultural meteorologists, political scientists, geographers, sociologists, and business counselors—but for all who are concerned in any way with environmental trends, world and domestic food supplies, and their effects on human institutions.

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cover of KEEP BOOKS Digital Editions Kindergarten Science Set 1: Weather-Related Concepts

KEEP BOOKS Digital Editions Kindergarten Science Set 1

Weather-Related Concepts

Marsha Levering

Keep Books, 2020

This set of four books offers engaging stories that combine features of early literacy learning while exploring weather-related concepts from Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards.
Stories include: Spring, Summer, Fall, & Winter.

Stories include: Spring, Summer, Fall, & Winter.

Age Level: 5/6
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Reading level: not leveled

KEEP BOOKS digital editions include text features and design elements that give beginning readers what they need to start reading on their own with high interest titles that they can easily manage.

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cover of KEEP BOOKS Digital Editions Kindergarten Science Set 2: Weather-Related Concepts

KEEP BOOKS Digital Editions Kindergarten Science Set 2

Weather-Related Concepts

Marsha Levering

Keep Books, 2020

This set of four books offers engaging stories that combine features of early literacy learning while exploring weather-related concepts from Common Core  State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards.

Stories include: May, Rain, December, & Is It Hot or Cold?. 

Age Level: 5/6
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Reading level: not leveled

KEEP BOOKS digital editions include text features and design elements that give beginning readers what they need to start reading on their own with high interest titles that they can easily manage.

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cover of Lake Michigan in Motion: Responses of an Inland Sea to Weather, Earth-Spin, and Human Activities

Lake Michigan in Motion

Responses of an Inland Sea to Weather, Earth-Spin, and Human Activities

Clifford H. Mortimer

University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

Written in a clear, readable style by an acknowledged expert in limnology and biology, Lake Michigan in Motion is certain to become a classic reference book on the subject of the Great Lakes. Its blend of history, science, and public policy will give it broad appeal to limnologists, graduate students, researchers, public officials, elementary and high school teachers, those who live near the Lake, and those who use it for their livelihood and recreation.
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cover of Leaning Into The Wind: A Memoir Of Midwest Weather

Leaning Into The Wind

A Memoir Of Midwest Weather

Susan Allen Toth

University of Minnesota Press, 2006

Midwesterners love to talk about the weather, approaching the vagaries and challenges of extreme temperatures, deep snow, and oppressive humidity with good-natured complaining, peculiar pride, and communal spirit. Such a temperamental climate can at once terrify and disturb, yet offer unparalleled solace and peace.Leaning into the Wind is a series of ten intimate essays in which Susan Allen Toth, who has spent most of her life in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, reveals the ways in which weather has challenged and changed her perceptions about herself and the world around her. She describes her ever-growing awareness of and appreciation for how the weather marks the major milestones of her life. Toth explores issues as large as weather and spirituality in “Who Speaks in the Pillar of Cloud?” and topics as small as a mosquito in “Things That Go Buzz in the Night.” In “Storms,” a severe thunderstorm becomes a continuing metaphor for the author’s troubled first marriage. Two essays, one from the perspective of childhood and one from late middle age, ponder how the weather seems different at various stages of life but always provides unexpected opportunities for self-discovery, change, and renewal. The perfect entertainment for anyone who loved Toth’s previous books on travel and memoir, Leaning into the Wind offers engaging and personal insights on the delights and difficulties of Midwest weather. Susan Allen Toth is the author of several books, including Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood (1981), My Love Affair with England (1992), England As You Like It (1995), and England for All Seasons (1997). She has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, and Vogue. She lives in Minneapolis.
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cover of Making the Weather: Six Politicians Who Changed Modern Britain

Making the Weather

Six Politicians Who Changed Modern Britain

Vernon Bogdanor

Haus Publishing, 2025

A study of six prominent postwar politicians in the United Kingdom.

Making the Weather is the story of six postwar politicians, all of whom exerted an outsized influence on the political life of the United Kingdom—an influence greater than that of most prime ministers. Vernon Bogdanor’s cast includes three from the political Left—Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, Roy Jenkins, and Tony Benn—and three from the Right—Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph, and Nigel Farage. Each study is a fascinating analysis examining how these men achieved such prominence and influence and how, though very different figures in many ways, they came to dominate the political landscape, often for years.

Each of the six made fundamental contributions to the debate about Britain’s future and to the vibrancy of British democracy. From immigration to Europe, from the National Health Service to devolution, the issues and causes that brought these men to prominence are still relevant.
 
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cover of New England Weather, New England Climate

New England Weather, New England Climate

Gregory A. Zielinski

University of New Hampshire Press, 2005

New Englanders talk as much about their weather as about all other subjects combined. Anyone who's scampered for shelter during a summer shower or shoveled a path through snow in May knows that bending to the weather's whims is a way of life in New England. But what do you actually know about New England's weather or climate?

Combining a scholarly appreciation of weather systems and events with an ability to transmit their passion to a general audience, Gregory A. Zielinski and Barry D. Keim have written a one-of-a-kind guide to New England weather and climate. Not only are weather patterns in New England more changeable and more extreme than almost anywhere in the country, New England is the ultimate destination of nearly all storm tracks nationwide. Recently, newsworthy items such as global warming, El Niño, and La Niña have significantly impacted our local weather, in both the short and long term. Luckily, the science of meteorology and climatology and their tools of observation and analysis have made great strides in the past few years.

The authors offer an in-depth explanation of the latest theoretical insights into New England's weather along with a flurry of stories and lore about the vagaries of our clime. The book is divided into the seasons as we actually experience them—ski season, mud season, beach and lake season, and foliage season. It includes photos and illustrations: some all too familiar, many hard to believe. Zielinski and Keim succeed in providing an illuminating and entertaining analysis and commentary while whole-heartedly embracing our region's atmospheric peculiarities. This book won't do anything about New England's weather or climate but it will help you understand each of them.
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cover of Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology

Predicting the Weather

Victorians and the Science of Meteorology

Katharine Anderson

University of Chicago Press, 2005

Victorian Britain, with its maritime economy and strong links between government and scientific enterprises, founded an office to collect meteorological statistics in 1854 in an effort to foster a modern science of the weather. But as the office turned to prediction rather than data collection, the fragile science became a public spectacle, with its forecasts open to daily scrutiny in the newspapers. And meteorology came to assume a pivotal role in debates about the responsibility of scientists and the authority of science.

Studying meteorology as a means to examine the historical identity of prediction, Katharine Anderson offers here an engrossing account of forecasting that analyzes scientific practice and ideas about evidence, the organization of science in public life, and the articulation of scientific values in Victorian culture. In Predicting the Weather, Anderson grapples with fundamental questions about the function, intelligibility, and boundaries of scientific work while exposing the public expectations that shaped the practice of science during this period.

A cogent analysis of the remarkable history of weather forecasting in Victorian Britain, Predicting the Weather will be essential reading for scholars interested in the public dimensions of science.
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cover of Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth, Second Edition: Weather, Climate Change, and Finding Deep Powder in Utah's Wasatch Mountains and Around the World

Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth, Second Edition

Weather, Climate Change, and Finding Deep Powder in Utah's Wasatch Mountains and Around the World

Jim Steenburgh

Utah State University Press, 2023

Utah has long claimed to have the greatest snow on Earth—the state itself has even trademarked the phrase. In Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth, Jim Steenburgh investigates Wasatch weather, exposing the myths, explaining the reality, and revealing how and why Utah’s powder lives up to its reputation. Steenburgh also examines ski and snowboard regions beyond Utah, providing a meteorological guide to mountain weather and snow climates around the world.

Chapters explore mountain weather, avalanches and snow safety, historical accounts of weather events and snow conditions, and the basics of climate and weather forecasting. In this second edition, Steenburgh explains what creates the best snow for skiing and snowboarding using accurate and accessible language and 150 color photographs and illustrations, making Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth a helpful tool for planning vacations and staying safe during mountain adventures.

This edition is updated with two new chapters covering microclimates and climate change in greater depth. Steenburgh addresses the declining snowpack and the future of snow across the western United States, as well as the declining snow and ice in several regions of the world—the European Alps in particular. Snowriders, weather enthusiasts, meteorologists, students of snow science, and anyone who dreams of deep powder and bluebird skies will want to get their gloves on this new edition of Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth.

Praise for the first edition:
“Everything you always wanted to know about how snow forms and how to follow forecasts so you see
how much an”d where is in the book. It’s a must-have for any fan of snow, sure to get you excited about
winter, and give you a bevy of conversation topics for the chairlift ride.”

—Utah Adventure Journal

“For backcountry enthusiasts that find themselves infatuated with weather patterns, snow-water
equivalents, microclimates, and Utah, this book is a dream come true.”

—The Backcountry Skiing Blog

“Steenburgh shares a career’s worth of knowledge in this book. His love of both snow science and skiing
is obvious, and he adds humor and personality to the scientific discussion.”

—First Tracks!! Online Skiing Magazine

“When it comes to snow, the details—both small- and large-scale—do matter. If we all observed our
surroundings with as much curiosity and enthusiasm as Steenburgh, the world could be a much better-
tended place.”

—American Scientist

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cover of Superstorm Sandy: The Inevitable Destruction and Reconstruction of the Jersey Shore

Superstorm Sandy

The Inevitable Destruction and Reconstruction of the Jersey Shore

Bates, Diane C

Rutgers University Press, 2015

Sandy was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history after Katrina, but the waters had barely receded from the Jersey coast when massive efforts began to “Restore the Shore.”  Why do people build in areas open to repeated natural disasters?  And why do they return to these areas in the wake of major devastation?  Drawing on a variety of insights from environmental sociology, Superstorm Sandy answers these questions as it looks at both the unique character of the Jersey Shore and the more universal ways that humans relate to their environment. 
 
Diane C. Bates offers a wide-ranging look at the Jersey Shore both before and after Sandy, examining the many factors—such as cultural attachment, tourism revenues, and governmental regulation—that combined to create a highly vulnerable coastal region. She explains why the Shore is so important to New Jerseyans, acting as a key cultural touchstone in a state that lacks a central city or even a sports team to build a shared identity among the state’s residents. She analyzes post-Sandy narratives about the Jersey Shore that trumpeted the dominance of human ingenuity over nature (such as the state’s “Stronger than the Storm” advertising campaign) or proclaimed a therapeutic community (“Jersey Strong”)—narratives rooted in emotion and iconography, waylaying any thought of the near-certainty of future storms. The book also examines local business owners, politicians, real estate developers, and residents who have vested interests in the region, explaining why the Shore was developed intensively prior to Sandy, and why restoration became an imperative in the post-storm period.
 
Engagingly written and insightful, Superstorm Sandy highlights the elements that compounded the disaster on the Shore, providing a framework for understanding such catastrophes and preventing them in the future. 
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cover of The AMS Weather Book: The Ultimate Guide to America's Weather

The AMS Weather Book

The Ultimate Guide to America's Weather

Jack Williams

University of Chicago Press, 2009

America has some of the most varied and dynamic weather in the world. Every year, the Gulf Coast is battered by hurricanes, the Great Plains are ravaged by tornados, the Midwest is pummeled by blizzards, and the temperature in the Southwest reaches a sweltering 120 degrees. Extreme weather can be a matter of life and death, but even when it is pleasant—72 degrees and sunny—weather is still central to the lives of all Americans. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a topic of greater collective interest. Whether we want to know if we should close the storm shutters or just carry an umbrella to work, we turn to forecasts. But few of us really understand the science behind them.

All that changes with The AMS Weather Book. The most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to our weather and our atmosphere, it is the ultimate resource for anyone who wants to understand how hurricanes form, why tornados twirl, or even why the sky is cerulean blue. Written by esteemed science journalist and former USA Today weather editor Jack Williams, The AMS Weather Book, copublished with the American Meteorological Society, covers everything from daily weather patterns, air pollution, and global warming to the stories of people coping with severe weather and those who devote their lives to understanding the atmosphere, oceans, and climate. Words alone, of course, are not adequate to explain many meteorological concepts, so The AMS Weather Book is filled with engaging full-color graphics that explain such concepts as why winds blow in a particular direction, how Doppler weather radar works, what happens inside hurricanes, how clouds create wind and snow, and what’s really affecting the earth’s climate.

For Weather Channel junkies, amateur meteorologists, and storm chasers alike, The AMS Weather Book is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to better understand how weather works and how it affects our lives.

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cover of The March Wind

The March Wind

Inez Rice

Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017

Every child knows that costumes are magical. Put on the right hat, add some imagination, and you can be anyone.

That's what happens to a little boy in The March Wind. Finding a large black hat lying in the street, he tries it on . . . and instantly becomes a host of exciting characters: a soldier marching proudly through puddles, a cowboy galloping on his steed, a bandit fleeing the law under cover of night, a circus ringleader entertaining the crowd. But then the owner of the hat returns, and the boy finds himself face to face with the March Wind. Is this part of his imagination, too, or is something bigger happening?   

This charming children’s book, first published in 1957, is brought to life by the timeless illustrations of Vladimir Bobri, whose wonderfully imaginative renderings of the boy’s flights of fancy are endearing and captivating. It will charm parents and children alike.
 
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cover of The Meaning of Weather: A Media History

The Meaning of Weather

A Media History

John Durham Peters

University of Chicago Press, 0

A sweeping history of our relationship with weather in art, media, philosophy, religion, and science—and how the climate continually defies demystification. 

We moderns tend to take the weather for granted.  We know it through hourly timetables and radar maps and otherwise make it the subject of predictable and safe conversation. But weather is not safe or predictable and never has been. People have long used all their ingenuity to imagine and portray its shifty ways.  As John Durham Peters argues, a closer look at the history of these efforts, from painting and poetry to cartography and close observation, has the potential to disclose something important about what it means to live in the world. 

In The Meaning of Weather, John Durham Peters shows how the long history of understanding the weather has seen dreamers and data-crunchers alike craft remarkable visions of the world around us. From Babylonian astronomy to the Event Horizon Telescope, from illuminated manuscripts to television, and more, Peters explores the kaleidoscopic ways people have sought to understand, tame, or manage the weather—and how the climate resists being bridled. In this magisterial telling, Peters reimagines Western culture as a continuing struggle to know ourselves and each other through an ever-changing environment.

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cover of The Sky Is Our Song: The "Phaenomena" of Aratus

The Sky Is Our Song

The "Phaenomena" of Aratus

Aratus

University of Chicago Press, 2025

An ancient Greek guide to the heavens, translated in a new accessible modern English edition.
 
A poetic guide to the heavens, the Phaenomena of Aratus—dating from around 270 BCE—was widely known across the ancient world, second only in fame to the works of Homer. Beginning with an invocation to Zeus, the poem describes the constellations of the northern and southern skies, the celestial sphere, and weather signs. Aratus’s vivid work offered a complete handbook of astronomy, constellations, and weather, and this treatise on the night sky was later translated or adapted by luminaries including Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. The Phaenomena remained popular throughout the Renaissance and had more than sixty printed editions by the early seventeenth century, but its fame has faded in the modern world.
 
With this edition, renowned translator and amateur astronomer Stanley Lombardo renders Aratus’s poem in reader-friendly vernacular English verse. Complete with endnotes, an accessible introduction, and astronomically accurate illustrations, The Sky Is Our Song brings this master poet’s celebration of the sky to a twenty-first-century audience, inviting new readers to follow Aratus on a visual journey through star signs, moon phases, weather phenomena, and all wonders of the heavens.
 
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cover of The Weather and a Place to Live: Photographs of the Suburban West

The Weather and a Place to Live

Photographs of the Suburban West

Steven B. Smith

Duke University Press, 2005

In compelling, often stunning black-and-white photographs, The Weather and a Place to Live portrays the manmade landscape of the western United States. Here we come face to face with the surreal intersection of the American appetite for suburban development and the resistant, rolling, arid country of the desert West. Steven B. Smith’s extraordinary photographs take us into the contemporary reality of sprawling suburbs reconfiguring what was once vast, unpopulated territory. With arresting concision and an unblinking eye, Smith shows how a new frontier is being won, and suggests too how it may be lost in its very emergence. Since the early 1990s Smith has been making large-format photographs in California, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. Based on this body of work, he was chosen as winner of the biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography.

The power of these photographs lies in part in Smith’s unusual knowledge of the places he portrays. Raised in Utah, Smith has worked on construction crews, and he was a contractor in California after living on the East Coast for a few years. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1991, he writes, “I was so astounded by what I saw happening to the landscape as it was being developed that I started photographing it immediately. The landscapes I saw were scraped bare, re-sculpted, sealed, and then covered so as not to erode away before the building process could be completed.”

Smith’s photographs offer a disturbing vision of the future of our planet, where the desire for home ownership is pitted against the costs of development in epic proportions. These altered landscapes force us to consider the consequences of human design battling natural forces across great expanses, a fragile balancing act and a contorted equation in which nature becomes both inspiration and invisible adversary. Smith’s elegant photographs of this constructed universe confront us with the beauty of images as images, yet push us to reflect on the devastation possible in the simple act of choosing a place to live.

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cover of The Weather in Proust

The Weather in Proust

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Duke University Press, 2012

The Weather in Proust gathers pieces written by the eminent critic and theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in the last decade of her life, as she worked toward a book on Proust. This book takes its title from the first essay, a startlingly original interpretation of Proust. By way of Neoplatonism, Buddhism, and the work of Melanie Klein, Sedgwick establishes the sense of refreshment and surprise that the author of the Recherche affords his readers. Proust also figures in pieces on the poetry of C. P. Cavafy, object relations, affect theory, and Sedgwick’s textile art practices. More explicitly connected to her role as a pioneering queer theorist are an exuberant attack against reactionary refusals of the work of Guy Hocquenghem and talks in which she lays out her central ideas about sexuality and her concerns about the direction of US queer theory. Sedgwick lived for more than a dozen years with a diagnosis of terminal cancer; its implications informed her later writing and thinking, as well as her spiritual and artistic practices. In the book’s final and most personal essay, she reflects on the realization of her impending death. Featuring thirty-seven color images of her art, The Weather in Proust offers a comprehensive view of Sedgwick’s later work, underscoring its diversity and coherence.
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cover of UP: A Scientist's Guide to the Magic Above Us

UP

A Scientist's Guide to the Magic Above Us

Lucy Rogers

Michigan State University Press, 2027

Engineer and bubble scientist Lucy Rogers invites us to explore the wonders of the air, sky, and space; understand the science; and appreciate the insights this offers about life on Earth. The sky is a world of endless wonder. From the intricate dance of clouds and the vibrant hues of the aurora borealis to the marvel of effortless soaring birds and the silent majesty of the stars, it is a living storybook. Join Rogers on a marvelous adventure through a kite market in India, creep through the Borneo jungle to witness millions of bats pour out of a cave at dusk, venture to Tornado Alley to chase the raw power of storms, and journey to Mexico to stand in awe of a total solar eclipse. Up is for anyone who has ever looked up at the sky in awe and needs to know the science behind its never-ending phenomena.

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cover of Weather in Texas: The Essential Handbook

Weather in Texas

The Essential Handbook

By George W. Bomar

University of Texas Press, 2017

Only in Texas could a snowstorm pelt the Panhandle at the very moment abrasive dust is scouring the Permian Basin while searing heat is wilting the Winter Garden region in the south. The state’s large size and central location within North America subject it to a great variety of weather occurrences. Texas state meteorologist George W. Bomar has been observing Texas weather for nearly half a century, and in Weather in Texas, he provides the essential guide to all of the state’s weather phenomena.

Writing in lively layman’s language, Bomar fully explains both how the weather works and how Texans can prepare for and stay safe during extreme weather events. He describes the forces that shape Texas weather from season to season, including the influence of tropical cyclones, frontal boundaries, El Niño, and the polar jet stream. Bomar puts specific weather events in historical context, using a ranking system to illustrate how recent droughts, snowstorms, hurricanes, flash floods, and tornadoes compare with those of previous generations. He also includes comprehensive tabulations of weather data for every area of Texas, quantifying what constitutes “normal” weather, as well as the extreme limits of variables such as low and high temperatures, rain days, snow accumulations, and earliest and latest freezes. With everything from the latest science on climate change and weather modification to dramatic stories about landmark weather events, Weather in Texas is a must-have reference for all Texans..

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cover of Weather in the Courtroom: Memoirs from a Career in Forensic Meteorology

Weather in the Courtroom

Memoirs from a Career in Forensic Meteorology

William H. Haggard

American Meteorological Society, 2016

As director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in the late 1960s and early ’70s, William H. Haggard witnessed an explosion in the number of requests from attorneys needing weather data for their cases. But while the Center offered data certified by the Department of Commerce that could be submitted as evidence in a court of law, government meteorologists could not be released from work to interpret this data in the courtroom. In their place, pioneering forensic meteorologists stepped in to serve as expert witnesses.

For a society enthralled by courtroom drama, forensics, and natural disasters, Weather in the Courtroom is a perfect storm: an exciting inside scoop on legendary court cases where the weather may—or may not—have played a crucial role. Haggard explores both the meteorological facts and human stories of a variety of high-profile cases among the hundreds in which, after retiring from the government, he served as an expert witness. Were the disappearance of Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich’s plane on October 16, 1972; the collapse of Tampa Bay’s Skyway Bridge on May 9, 1980; and the crash of Delta Flight 191 in Dallas/Fort Worth on August 2, 1985, natural or human-caused disasters? Haggard’s recounting of these and other litigations reveals just how critical the interpretation of weather and climate data in the courtroom is to our understanding of what happened—and who, if anyone, is at fault.
 
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cover of Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology

Weather on the Air

A History of Broadcast Meteorology

Robert Henson

American Meteorological Society, 2010

From low humor to high drama, TV weather reporting has encompassed an enormous range of styles and approaches, triggering chuckles, infuriating the masses, and at times even saving lives. In Weather on the Air,meteorologist and science journalist Robert Henson covers it all—the people, technology, science, and show business that combine to deliver the weather to the public each day.

            
The first comprehensive history of its kind, Weather on the Air explores the many forces that have shaped weather broadcasts over the years, including the long-term drive to professionalize weathercasting, the complex relations between government and private forecasters, and the effects of climate-change science and the Internet on today’s broadcasts. Dozens of photos and anecdotes accompany Henson’s more than two decades of research to document the evolution of weathercasts, from their primitive beginnings on the radio to the high-gloss, graphics-laden segments we watch on television every morning.


This engaging study will be an invaluable tool for students of broadcast meteorology and mass communication and an entertaining read for anyone fascinated by the public face of weather.

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