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Richard Hamblyn

Auteur van De taal van de wolken

16+ Werken 661 Leden 15 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Richard Hamblyn was born in 1965 & is a graduate of the universities of Essex & Cambridge, where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on the early history of geology in Britain. He lives & works in London. (Bowker Author Biography)

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Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
1965
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
UK
Beroepen
lecturer (English and humanities)
Korte biografie
I am an environmental writer and historian, with a particular interest in the cultural cross-currents that flow between the sciences and the humanities. I was born in 1965 and grew up in Truro, Cornwall; Kingston, Jamaica; and Hastings, East Sussex (my adopted father was a fisheries biologist – hence the maritime locations).

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The author takes what is essentially a biography of the man who came up with the cloud classification system and expands it so that it encompasses an exploration of the romantic age, with nods to scientists like Darwin and Beaufort and also to artists like Constable and Wordsworth and to those like Goethe who managed to be both scientists and artists.Enjoyed.
 
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cspiwak | 8 andere besprekingen | Mar 6, 2024 |
[This is a review I wrote in 2009]

** Four devastating natural disasters narrated largely from eye-witness accounts**

A narration of four events that changed the world, all natural disasters. Each disaster chosen corresponds to one of the four natural elements - earth, air, fire, water - showing how volatile each of these elements can be. Richard Hamblyn has chosen the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the European Air Panic of 1783 (the unusual weather phenomena and strange appearance of the skies), the Krakatoa volcanic eruption of 1883, and the Hilo Tsunami of 1946. His preface about the most devastating Tsunami in recorded history, the Boxing Day disaster in 2004 is a stark reminder of our vulnerability to natural disasters at any time and how important it is that we as humans learn from what our planet is telling us and learn from any past mistakes in dealing with these catastrophic events.

Part history, part history of science and geology, reading Richard Hamblyn's narration is a humbling experience. Each case history is drawn primarily from eye-witness accounts which lends a very human perspective to these natural disasters and enhances the reminder that any one of these events could take place again. A very readable and thought-provoking thesis.
… (meer)
 
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ArdizzoneFan | 2 andere besprekingen | Nov 12, 2020 |
This isn't a coffee-table book of the prettiest/most dramatic cloud pictures available. Instead it is a book that explains the classifications of clouds used by the global meteorological community, with the photographs acting primarily as illustrations. As such they are very good - and some of them actually are pretty or dramatic. The explanations, with the aid of the glossary are probably accessible to most people, definitely so if the reader has prior familiarity with basic amateur meteorology, including terms like troposphere, cold front, depression, convection, etc. And indeed the text will give people who need to be able to make short-term weather forecasts based only on information directly observable by their senses (e.g. hikers/mountaineers) much useful knowledge. At the end there is a section on rare cloud types and optical atmospheric phenomena that can and does indulge the urge towards the dramatic more than the main body of the book and a brief essay on clouds in relation to anthopogenic climate change, a topic of great complexity and importance that is also difficult to study.

Given its aims, this is a very good book.
… (meer)
 
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Arbieroo | Jul 17, 2020 |
A little bit pointless, and feels like it's still in draft. Nice cover though. Accidentally stole this from UCL Common Room, so perhaps that's karma.
 
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sometimeunderwater | Aug 5, 2016 |

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Statistieken

Werken
16
Ook door
1
Leden
661
Populariteit
#38,154
Waardering
½ 3.6
Besprekingen
15
ISBNs
39
Talen
5

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