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Cargando... Sand: The Never-Ending Story (edición 2010)por Michæl Welland
Información de la obraSand: The Never-Ending Story por Michael Welland
Books Read in 2013 (247) Geology (11) Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Welland's 'Sand' has the potential to be one of those great books that illuminate some aspect of the natural world that we take for granted. He has the credentials, he is a geologist, and he has a fascination with sand, and - oddly enough - he has a fascinating subject that presents many aspects and angles. He writes with passion too, and it makes this an entertaining read - in parts. What is lacking in this book is 'pace'. If his publisher had been a little more sympathetic to the subject we could have had a great many more illustrations, diagrams and maps. And if his editor had been a little more in tune with the needs of the reader we might have had a lot more of Welland's excellent and entertaining anecdotes about his, and other's, experiences with sand. As it stands the story is a bit too dry in parts, too laboured. Resorting to a 'A to Z of Sand' chapter (as he does) is simply - too my mind - sweeping up the aspects of the story that he couldn't fit in elsewhere. But they should have fitted in elsewhere if this was a smooth flowing (and gripping) narrative. So in the end this is a somewhat disjointed gem. Worth reading, but with a little regret for what it could have been... ( ) I seem to be in deep science mode in my reading recently, a tethering of poetry and science, "scientopic" if you will. Welland's exhaustively comprehensive book about sand is endlessly fascinating; everything you ever wanted to know as well as everything you never knew you wanted to know about sand: its physics, chemistry, evolution & biology, as well as its cultural, imaginal, & literary dimensions & multiple identities. Very well written, evocative and immensely engaging. A dense and weighty text in keeping with its eponymous subject, yet entirely readable and entertaining. The photographs, figures and color plates add tremendously to Welland's explanation of the structure, character and movement of sand. The best chapter, Servant - Sand in Our Lives, is an A (for abrasive) through Z (for Zen garden) of sand's ubiquitously functional presence, without which neither the natural world nor man's constructions could be as we know them. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, this is the extraordinary story of one of nature's humblest, most powerful, and most ubiquitous materials. Told by a geologist with a novelist's sense of language and narrative, Sand examines the science-sand forensics, the physics of granular materials, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration-and at the same time explores the rich human context of sand. Interwoven with tales of artists, mathematicians, explorers, and even a vampire, the story of sand is an epic of environmental construction and destruction, an adventure in staggering scales of time and distance, yet a tale that encompasses the ordinary and everyday. Sand, in fact, is all around us-it has made possible our computers, buildings and windows, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and it has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and imagination. In this luminous, kinetic, revelatory account, we do indeed find the world in a grain of sand. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)553.622Natural sciences and mathematics Earth sciences & geology Economic Geology Earthy economic minerals SandsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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