Still Waters: The Secret World of Lakes

by Curt Stager

Overview

A fascinating exploration of lakes around the world, from Walden Pond to the Dead Sea.

More than a century and a half have passed since Walden was first published, and the world is now a very different place. Lakes are changing rapidly, not because we are separate from nature but because we are so much a part of it. While many of our effects on the natural world today are new, from climate change to nuclear fallout, our connections to it are ancient, as core samples from lake beds reveal. In Still Waters, Curt Stager introduces us to the secret worlds hidden beneath the surfaces of our most remarkable lakes, leading us on a journey from the pristine waters of the Adirondack Mountains to the wilds of Siberia, from Thoreau’s cherished pond to the Sea of Galilee.

Through decades of firsthand investigations, Stager examines the significance of our impacts on some of the world’s most iconic inland waters. Along the way he discovers the stories these lakes contain about us, including our loftiest philosophical ambitions and our deepest myths. For him, lakes are not only mirrors reflecting our place in the natural world but also windows into our history, culture, and the primal connections we share with all life.

Beautifully observed and eloquently written, Stager’s narrative is filled with strange and enchanting details about these submerged worlds—diving insects chirping underwater like crickets, African crater lakes that explode, and the growing threats to some of our most precious bodies of water. Modern science has demonstrated that humanity is an integral part of nature on this planet, so intertwined with it that we have also become an increasingly powerful force of nature in our own right. Still Waters reminds us how beautiful, complex, and vulnerable our lakes are, and how, more than ever, it is essential to protect them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393292176
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/29/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	272
File size:	40 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Curt Stager is a professor of natural sciences at Paul Smith’s College in New York. New York State’s Carnegie-Case Science Professor of the Year in 2013, he cohosts Natural Selections on North Country Public Radio and has published in periodicals such as Science, National Geographic, and The New York Times.

Table of Contents

Prologue xiii

1 Walden 1

2 Waters of Life, Waters of Death 31

3 Lakes Through the Looking Glass 61

4 The Great Rift 89

5 Galilee 115

6 Sky Water 143

7 Heritage Lakes 171

Glossary 203

Acknowledgments 209

References Cited 213

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/01/2018
Stager (Deep Future; Your Atomic Self; Field Notes from the Northern Forest) builds on decades of research and observation in the Adirondacks, Tanzania, Siberia, Israel, and beyond in this deep dive into lakes, ponds, and inland seas around the world. Stager is a natural and lucid storyteller, and every chapter of this book is filled with vivid details on the fish, insects, microscopic organisms, and other creatures that make up a particular lake's ecosystem. Stager has previously written on global climate change—work that easily joins the ranks of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction. He takes a similarly long view of lake ecology here, yet this book has more in common with Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Stager sets out to update Walden's unique blend of genuine scientific information, aesthetic prose, and philosophical insights for the 21st century and more than ably succeeds. The chapter about Walden Pond not only sets the tone for the rest of the volume but also helps make a strong case for the beauty and vulnerability of our lakes. VERDICT An outstanding work of nature and science writing that lingers long after the book is closed. Highly recommended.—Meredith Powers, York Coll., Brooklyn

Library Journal

05/28/2018
Science professor Stager (Your Atomic Self) declares, “There’s nothing like a lake to reflect and reveal the world,” and he sets out to do the same in this philosophical meditation on lakes, their inhabitants, and the threats they face from human effects on the environment, reaching back thousands of years. He begins this literary tour of lakes he’s studied with Walden Pond, made famous by Henry David Thoreau, which provides a jumping-off point for discussions of diatoms, algae, Thoreau’s importance to readers, debates about the starting date of the Anthropocene, the difference in approaches between environmentalists and scientists, and mortality. Later sections examine and pay tribute to the flora, fauna, and natural laws governing lakes Stager has studied all over the world, from his hometown pond, where he “caught frogs on its banks in summer and skated on it in winter,” to Lake Victoria on the Tanzania-Uganda border, whose drying out (in the climate shifts during the end of the Ice Age) he recounts, drawing on data from sediment cores collected by researchers. All of this leads back to the connectedness between humans and other parts of nature. This contemplative volume, both informative and poetic, makes good on Stager’s intent to “upgrade” Walden “for our own century.” Illus. (May.)

Publishers Weekly

Curt Stager takes his readers into the depths of ponds, lakes and seas around the globe—both polluted and pristine, ancient and nearly new—and brings alive the universe of life contained within each. Picking up the torch lit by Thoreau more than 150 years ago, Still Waters plumbs a question that vexes ecologists and philosophers alike—Can waters so shaped by human hands ever again be considered 'natural'? His conclusions will surprise as much as they entertain and educate.

Dan Egan

Lakes reflect us both literally and metaphorically, in ways shallow and deep. We can see our faces as we peer into their surface. But more deeply, lakes also reflect how the world is changing. Curt Stager has written a deep book about lakes. He peers into deep time, letting lakes tell us what has been, as well as foretelling a bit about who we are becoming.

Carl Safina

Curt Stager is an eloquent storyteller. He not only guides us into the fascinating ecological worlds that dwell within lakes but also demonstrates that our own nature, both biological and cultural, cannot be understood apart from our many interconnections with these living waters.

David George Haskell

Curt Stager is as fine a teacher as I have ever encountered, both in the classroom and on the page. You will learn something new in every paragraph of this book, and the vivid writing will make it stick in your brain. For those of us who love the planet's lakes, this is like a long, cool drink of the freshest water.

Bill McKibben

Lyrical...offers geological and biological revelations.

Nature

Throughout Still Waters the reader has the pleasure of the author as a teacher, guide, and raconteur. In the tradition of fine nature writing, Stager takes us on an illuminating tangent here and a thrilling side tripe there. Best of all, we get to be scientists with him, venturing out into the world armed with questions and returning home with a smattering of answers, plus a host of new questions to ask....Stager immerses us in the seductive and ever-changing currents of lives in general and the lives of lakes in particular.

Ed Kanze - Adirondack Explorer

2018-03-19
An authoritative, quietly impassioned argument for the ecological stakes in the vitality of our lakes.Stager (Natural Sciences/Paul Smith's Coll.; Your Atomic Self: The Invisible Elements that Connect You to Everything Else in the Universe, 2014, etc.) is a specialist in lake ecology and paleoecology. In his latest book, he offers a composite biography of lakes (and ponds) deep, shallow, grand, and humble, though each with its own individual life story and projected futures. With rueful precision, the author chronicles numerous depredations visited on lakes, often in the name of creating and sustaining fisheries, while also studying the effects of nutrient pollution, soil erosion, species invasions, and extinctions. He reminds us that the interaction of humans with lakes is ancient and that many of the changes exhibited in lakes are naturally occurring evolutionary processes only marginally affected by us. Stager conducts his investigations of lake communities from the "still" waters of the Adirondacks to Walden Pond, from Siberia to the Middle East and Africa, bringing the science to life through historical anecdotes and environmental observations that are measured and fair. However, the author is less successful in some of the descriptive passages that attempt to lend atmosphere, though he achieves a hint of eloquence here and there. For a primer on the "secret world" of lakes and for surprising facts and speculations on the microscopic and macroscopic realms—all carefully assembled and presented—the book is an important contribution to understanding how lakes, beyond their singular beauty, are windows to our primal connections to all life. "There is nothing like a lake to reflect and reveal the world," he writes. Evoking Thoreau and Emerson, Stager also demonstrates that the romantic ideology of wilderness can be counterproductive.Stager corrects many myths and misconceptions regarding what constitutes "healthy" lakes while analyzing troubling issues and threats. Yet he also swims in a pool of abiding human fascination.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More