To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate

by Dallas Murphy

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465005109
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/23/2008
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

Journalist, sailor, and fiction and nonfiction writer Murphy's last book, Rounding the Horn, could be used as background to this one. In both, he employs history, scientific research, and personal experience to explore ocean movement, particularly currents, as well as the interaction of air and water and their effect on climate. As he explains clearly (and without all the formulas), "climate is an essentially unstable set of interdependent systems," and change is more likely to occur in a matter of decades rather than centuries. Though he doesn't incite panic, he does express concern. Murphy admits his thesis may be difficult to accept, but the evidence he presents is overwhelming. A lengthy bibliography of books and journal articles provides the reader with additional research, and there is some political commentary regarding the status quo and research funding issues. Many books exist on climate change but none as approachable as this. An entertaining review of the subject; recommended for public and academic libraries. (Index not seen.)
—Jean E. Crampon

Library Journal