Waterstones Lakes
33 ratings
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Price: £21.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: ' Lakes is my favorite kind of natural history: meticulously researched, timely, comprehensive, and written with imagination and verve." | ?? Jerry Dennis, author of The Living Great Lakes Lakes might be the most misunderstood bodies of water on earth. And while they may seem commonplace, without lakes our world would never be the same. In this revealing look at these lifegiving treasures, John Richard Saylor shows us just how deep our connection to still waters run. Lakes is an illuminating tour through the most fascinating lakes around the world. Whether it's Lake Vostok, located more than two miles beneath the surface of Antarctica, whose water was last exposed to the atmosphere perhaps a million years ago; Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the world's deepest and oldest lake formed by a rift in the earth's crust; or Lake Nyos, the so-called Killer Lake that exploded in 1986, resulting in hundreds of deaths, Saylor reveals to us the wonder that exists in lakes found throughout the world. Along the way we learn all the many forms that lakes take | ??how they come to be and how they feed and support ecosystems | ??and what happens when lakes vanish.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781643260488
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9781643260488
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Author: SMB
Rating: 5
Review: This is a very well-written series of interesting bits about lakes. Saylor does a brilliant job explaining some very technical science in a very simple and digestible way. To be clear, this book is not a scientific textbook. This would be enjoyed by anyone interested in the outdoors/environment/nature. I never thought I'd be fascinated by lakes!
Author: Aaron C. Brown
Rating: 4
Review: This is neither a limnology text nor a cross-disciplinary account of lakes. It's best described as a series of essays inspired by the scientific study of lakes. The author's interest is exclusively in the physical world, you won't find material on cultural, historical or literary importance of lakes. The essays dive deeply into specific topics, but they are not organized systematically like a course. On the plus side, the essays are well-written and entertaining. They approach the subject from multiple perspectives--how scientific work proceeds, the overall role of lakes in the planetary environment, how geology forms and affects lakes, how lakes affect their local geology, living in lakes and so forth. You will learn a lot about lakes, and also about science in general. On the negative side, the scientific level of the essays varies widely. Some repeat basic middle-school science concepts a tedious length, others demand a pretty good college science education to follow--and some of the latter are pretty far removed from core limnology. I don't mind this myself, it's always good to refresh the basics, and I'm always happy to learn stuff, whether or not it's highly relevant to the book title. One minor gripe is the author mixes units in confusing ways, switching between metric and English measures even when making direct comparisons, and throwing in not-very-helpful ad-hoc measures like "football fields" or total California water consumption in 1965--things that won't help most readers comprehend sizes. The discussion of the number of lakes in the world is particularly irritating in this respect, with constant switching of size limits and reporting of round metric sizes in odd numbers of acres. Overall, I recommend this book for someone with a pretty good science background who want to learn a semi-random selection of stuff related in one way or another to lakes. It's probably not the best way to get a consistent basic introduction to lake science, but it's more fun to read than that is likely to be.
