To Follow the Water: Exploring the Sea to Discover Climate: From the Gulf Stream to the Blue Beyond

by Dallas Murphy

Book Overview

In To Follow the Water , critically acclaimed author Dallas Murphy artfully recasts the story of human expansion and cultural development with the ocean playing the central role. Applying a novelist's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158243350X
• ISBN13: 9781582433509
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

What A Trip!

A great read! I love Murphy's books because he takes me on adventure trips both in time and place. How inventive that he begins this book with a bean that has travelled to Ireland on the Gulf Stream! As an armchair adventurer myself, I appreciate Murphy's relaxed voice. Like a friend telling me a story about a subject he really knows and loves. Best of all, Murphy has the uncanny ability to distill the complexities of oceanography, and turn them into adventure. I'm a big Dallas Murphy fan. He's a writer, sailor, and researcher whose books always leave me astounded, informed and truly delighted.

An important book

Dallas Murphy's book To Follow the Water, about ocean science and the discovery by oceanographers of how the ocean can determine our climate, is so beautifully done, the language so crisp and lovely, that it becomes a piece of literature as well as science. Murphy traces the history of ocean exploration, building to up-to-the-minute discoveries about the unseen significance of ocean circulation in our lives and our current global-warming crisis. The author spent several months at sea aboard research vessels, working with oceanographers who are trying to use ocean circulation on the surface and in the deep to predict climate change. I really enjoyed his vivid, humorous portrayal of daily life aboard these ships. This is a thoroughly delightful book, and it may be an important one.

To Follow the Water

Dallas Murphy has filled in a key piece of the climate puzzle with his new book, "To follow the Water". His last book, "Rounding the Horn" was a wonderful tale of the men, sea, and ships that made Cape Horn so mythical in men's minds. In "To follow the Water" Murphy takes the same approach and combines his personal time on board a research vessel with scientific interviews and profiles of the giants of Oceanography. The ocean's currents define life as we know it and the very fate of civilizations rest on their continued flow. Now the global warming taking place has the potential to shift these ocean gyres into new and different paths. In fact, as Murphy shows they also cause the climate to change as they shift their paths. The book traces the history of ocean exploration and the early discoveries that the ocean have currents and move as rivers. Murphy's time aboard the research vessels from NOAA paint a vivid portrait of the men and women who's job it is to measure, observe, and draw conclusions from the ocean's data. A great beach read as Murphy's book will decode the very water you are gazing out at.

fascinating ocean secrets

As a native Mainer and long-time lover of the sea, I approached Murphy's To Follow the Water with enthusiasm--just because the cover photo is so tempting (city dwellers dream of water in summer). But I feared this might be the kind of "good for you" science book that only specialists would really enjoy. What a surprise to find that Murphy has such a wonderful eye for narrative detail and personal anecdote that the complex science really comes to life. Particularly vivid are his descriptions of day-to-day life aboard the oceanographic research vessels (like the "swim-call story" about the fate of one scientist who went on a swimming break in equatorial waters). The oceanographers Murphy travels with are passionately devoted to their work; after reading To Follow the Water, I can understand why. I'll never look at the ocean in quite the same way. It's a key component in stabilizing our climate--Murphy convinces me. But it's also just tremendously beautiful and worthy of our respect--and Murphy conveys that fact even more.

Extremely timely look at factors impacting our climate

Dallas Murphy's new book "To Follow the Water" is about our relationship to the ocean. First he puts the relationship in an historical perspective beginning with explorers and early scientists such as Ben Franklin. But what makes the book important is his explanation about how the ocean works physically to moderate our climate. Murphy spent months at sea aboard ocean research vessels, participating in the expeditions and talking with real scientists. That way of life, largely unknown outside professional circles comes alive in his hands. He "translates" the science of oceanography into language that everyone can understand, appreciate, and enjoy. The result is a new understanding of the crucial importance of the ocean in terms of climate and climate change. This book is revealing and enlightening, but it's also a highly entertaining, fast-paced read. Murphy certainly changed my simple view of the ocean forever. Like in Murphy's previous book, "Rounding The Horn," his use of storytelling to explain scientific data is brilliant. I strongly recommend "To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate."