About this item
Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science - the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains - with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey's mopes and Kurt Cobain's grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Cynthia Barnett is an award-winning journalist who has reported on water and climate worldwide. She is the author of three books on water, including the latest Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, a finalist for the National Book Award and PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing and named a best book of 2015 by NPR's Science Friday, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald and others.Ms. Barnett's work appears in National Geographic, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Salon, Politico, Discover, and other publications. Her first book, Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (2007) won the gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards and was named one of the top 10 books that every Floridian should read. Her second, Blue Revolution, which calls for a new water ethic, was named by The Boston Globe as one of the top 10 U.S. science books of 2011.The Globe describes Ms. Barnett's author persona as "part journalist, part mom, part historian, and part optimist." The Los Angeles Times writes that she "takes us back to the origins of our water in much the same way, with much the same vividness and compassion as Michael Pollan led us from our kitchens to potato fields and feed lots of modern agribusiness."Ms. Barnett holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's in environmental history and spent a year studying freshwater as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she is also Environmental Journalist in Residence at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.For her articles, speaking schedule and other information, please visit www.cynthiabarnett.net.
