Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships

Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships

Rappaport, Elliot

Hardcover

BoatingEnvironmental Studies

Publisher Price: $32.00

ISBN10: 0593185056
ISBN13: 9780593185056
Publisher: Dutton
Published: Feb 14 2023
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A sea captain's beautifully written tour of our planet, our oceans, and our ever-changing atmosphere

An extraordinary book by a modern-day Melville.--Mark Vanhoenacker - Immensely rewarding and entertaining.--Lincoln Paine - Full of history, wisdom, and hilarious stories from life on the open seas.--Daniel Stone

What's in a cloud? Did you know that water vapor is invisible and actually lighter than dry air? What separates a tropical storm from a winter blizzard? And what exactly is El Niño? Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather is crucial to the safety of vessels and their crews. In Reading the Glass, he offers a sailor's-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere and unveils the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate.

Told through a series of tall ship voyages, Rappaport's narrative takes readers from the icy seas of Greenland to the Roaring Forties, places where one can experience all four seasons in an hour. He navigates the turbulent waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, en route to storied port cities of the Mediterranean. In the vast tropical Pacific he crosses the equator, where heat, moisture, and unsettled winds churn out powerful squalls, and drops anchor in isolated ports of call. He explores wide swathes of ocean to explain how the trade winds have carried ships westward for centuries, and how ancient Polynesian explorers pushed back the other way, leveraging their mastery of waves and weather to achieve what may be humanity's greatest navigational achievement.

Written in stunning prose, brimming with wisdom, curiosity, and humor, Reading the Glass brilliantly blends science and memoir to reveal how weather has shaped our oceans, our history, and ourselves.

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