The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works [Hardcover]

A Riveting.... The cultural history fascinates.... Wide-ranging and meticulously detailed, this captures the wonder, beauty, and intrigue of its subject. Superb& [Czerskis] profound, sparkling global ocean voyage mingles history and culture, natural history, geography, animals and people. A beautifully written guide to the seas reveals the hidden complexity of their role in moving energy around the Earth.... A brisk tour of the oceans, like a sleek catamaran skipping over the waves. Deftly harnessing the trade winds of history and geography, guiding us through eddies and currents of anecdote, [Czerski] leaves us with an understanding of the complexity of the oceans. A dazzle of stories beautifully told.... Czerski argues throughout that to truly see the miraculous oceans, to understand and to feel our connection to them, is vital and integral to our history and our future. Her outstanding book advances that understanding and honours that connection. Her readers will see the seas anew. Lively and engrossing.... Czerski is an exceptionally able guide.... Alongside her vivid portrayal of waters sliding over one another, colliding, mixing and turning into ice or water vapour, she explains how the living beings within the sea also form part of the blue machine.... [An] excellent and important book. A spectacular read. Czerskis fascinating new book casts the ocean as an extraordinary giant engine, and helps us grasp its complex physics and its key role in climate change. Czerski aims to greatly expand and even revolutionise the readers understanding of what is going on in seven tenths of the planet that is not covered in land. Czerski is a wonderful writer.... a compelling and elegantly written story.... Helen Czerski, urging us to see the ocean as a presence, not an absence, has done a remarkable job of shoehorning an overview of the whole shebang into a single, very readable volume. I love Helen Czerskis writing, and this is her richest work yetas clearlÎ