About this item
An adventurous ride through the most blisteringly hot regions of science, history, and culture. Melting glaciers, warming oceans, droughts-it's clear that today's world is getting hotter. But while we know the agony of a sunburn or the comfort of our winter heaters, do we really understand heat?A bestselling scientist and nature writer who goes to any extreme to uncover the answers, Bill Streever sets off to find out what heat really means. Let him be your guide and you'll firewalk across hot coals and sweat it out in Death Valley, experience intense fever and fire, learn about the invention of matches and the chemistry of cooking, drink crude oil, and explore thermonuclear weapons and the hottest moment of all time-the big bang.Written in Streever's signature spare and refreshing prose, HEAT is an adventurous personal narrative that leaves readers with a new vision of an everyday experience-how heat works, its history, and its relationship to daily life.
About the Author
MY BRIEF BIO: I am, among other things, the bestselling and award winning nature writer behind Cold, Heat, and And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind. I started my working life as a commercial oilfield diver in the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Asia. Later I became a biologist, ultimately running research programs focused on understanding and mitigating the effects of industrial development. As a scientist, I have worked on issues ranging from the environmental impacts of underwater sound to the evolution of cave crayfish to the restoration of tundra wetlands. Now, in my late fifties, I like to say that I see the world through the twin lenses of science and history. With my wife, marine biologist Lisanne Aerts, I live aboard the 53-year-old cruising sailboat Rocinante, currently in Curacao. When I am not busy fixing the boat, I spend my time sailing, reading, diving, hiking, rowing our dinghy, paddling a kayak, and, of course, writing.WHY DO I WRITE? It is hard work, and there are lots of reasons to give it up, but I keep at it because, for me, it is one of the best ways to learn about the world. BUT IT IS TOUGH TO KNOW WHEN WORDS RESONATE AND WHEN THEY FALL FLAT. So.... I always welcome words of encouragement from others:-In a New York Times review, writer Mary Roach called my book Cold a "love song to science and scientists, to Earth and everything that lives on and flies over and tunnels underneath it." Dwight Garner, also writing in a New York Times book review, called Cold "Original and organic: it is flinty and tough-minded, with just enough humor glowing around the edges to keep you toasty and dry."-Regarding my book Heat, a San Francisco Chronicle reviewer said that I was writing in "some of the same territory as Mary Roach and Bill Bryson: taking on big, serious topics, and making them entertaining without making them trivial, inserting himself into the narrative without overwhelming the material." A reviewer in the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote "Streever is an able guide into the flaming regions of our beleaguered evirons... a rare nature book, a pleasing mix of first-person narrative and layman science" and "The facts come fast and furious but are served on a platter of digestible prose." -About And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind, a Kirkus reviewer wrote "Science, history, and personal adventure come together in a wild and witty exploration of wind... Streever has a knack for blending his research and personal experience into an easy-to-read account that is hard to put down." And a Booklist reviewer wrote of what she saw as my "ability to make complex concepts easy to understand while still capturing the awe and mystery of nature."WHAT'S NEXT? My current book project, with Little, Brown, is In Oceans Deep, the story of humanity's presence beneath the waves. So, think diving, submersibles, and robots. With my background in diving and my love for all thing
