Windswept

The must-read natural history book of the season from the Governor General’s Award-winning author ofWater. Wind makes life on earth possible. It moderates climate, dispersing the sun’s rays and carrying moisture from the oceans to the land, where it falls as rain. Its action created the great rivers that nurtured the world’s earliest civilizations and permitted the development of the first technologies not dependent on human or animal energy. Winds affect human history, too. A Saharan sandstorm foiled the Persian invasion of Egypt in the fourth century B.C., and the Spanish Armada went down in defeat because the winds conspired with the British to blow in the wrong direction. Winds taught mankind to sail, and then to fly. This book delves into the origins of wind and weather. It looks at the power of the oceanic storms, at hurricanes, tornadoes, dust devils, and at the way the human species is tampering with the global climate. But wind is the most forgiving of our natural phenomena and in it nature has given us a perpetual motion machine that we can use to make things better. Always engaging and often provocative, Marq de Villiers has once again given us a compelling investigation of the natural world. From the Hardcover edition.