Overview

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source ofthe world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our founding forecaster, Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey s mopes and Kurt Cobain s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it. From the Hardcover edition.

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9780804137102

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Reviews

Rain is a lovely, lyrical, deeply informative book. It will change the way you look at gray skies, and sunny ones, too. --ELIZABETH KOLBERT, author of The Sixth Extinction In Rain, Cynthia Barnett has given us a landmark work of environmental history. She brilliantly illuminates the essential weather conditions that allow our blue-marble earth to exist. From now on I'll think about raindrops differently. Rain is a triumph. --DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, author of The Wilderness Warrior ; professor of history, Rice University Rain--the thing the weatherman frowns about--is one of the planet's great pulses, as this marvelous book makes clear. Read it now, recalling the rainstorms we grew up with, and anticipating the harsh new rainfall that's coming our way on a warming globe. --BILL McKIBBEN, author of Eaarth Brilliant, insightful, and beautifully written. Raindrops are prisms through which we see the surprising and profound connections among water, human history, and our uncertain future. --DAVID GEORGE HASKELL, author of The Forest Unseen ; professor of biology, University of the South Some of the most lyrical and surprising nature writing that I have ever read. This book is filled with wonder, as mysterious as the shape of a falling raindrop, which is not the drop we imagine, but a concave little parachute drifting to the earth below. After reading this, you will never look up the same way again. --RICHARD LOUV, author of Last Child in the Woods Rain is one of the most elegant and absorbing books ever written about the natural world. Writing with grace and imagination, Cynthia Barnett takes you on a journey into the heart of the most elemental force in our lives. An important, revelatory, and thoroughly wondrous book. --WILLIAM SOUDER, author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson Captivating and compelling, a delightful celebration of precipitation that is brimming with insight. Whether you're desperate for more of it or you just wish it would stop, you'll never think of rain in the same way again. --GAVIN PRETOR-PINNEY, author of The Cloud Collector's Handbook Cynthia Barnett looks at the human relationship to rain--from Noah, to Thomas Jefferson, to our own conflicted attitudes. The result is a book of unexpected connections and wonderful surprises. It will give you more respect for every rainstorm you experience, and more joy in the raindrops. --CHARLES FISHMAN, author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water Barnett's beautifully written book envelops the reader in warm shower of intriguing history and fascinating science. Anyone who looks longingly at rain clouds, rejoices in a spring downpour, or frets about drought, will love Rain. --DANIEL CHAMOWITZ, author of What a Plant Knows ; Director, Manna Center for Plant Biosciences, Tel Aviv University Like the weather, there's no predicting the delightful and sometimes disturbing surprises waiting on every page of Rain. Whether she's writing about Mesopotamia or the Met Office, Cynthia Barnett illuminates the hidden connections that tie our fate to a precious resource we neglect at our peril. --DAN FAGIN, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation Rain is one of those uncommonly wonderful books that are both highly significant and deeply pleasurable to read. As we face the coming time of storms, of flood and drought, nothing will be more important than rain. So all gratitude to Cynthia Barnett for writing a book that is clear, surprising, and filled with fascination. --KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE, co-editor of Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril If you care about this planet, you're lucky that Cynthia Barnett writes so elegantly and intelligently about the stuff that falls on it. It's kind of ironic--like rain on your wedding day?--that the folly of mankind's relentless efforts to control the earth's water has inspired Barnett's best work yet. --MICHAEL GRUNWALD, author of The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise A multifaceted examination of the science, the art, the technology and even the smell of rain throughout history... Highlights the severity of some of our environmental problems with knowledge, humor, urgency and hope. ' --KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred A seamless blending of personal narrative with scientific and cultural explanations...Fans of Mary Roach will recognize a similar ease of style and interjection of wit...Accessible to every reader, from the environmental scientist to the parent choosing whether their child needs to wear a raincoat that day. --LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred A spectacularly vivid, all-encompassing history of rain... Like John McPhee, Jared Diamond, and Elizabeth Kolbert, Barnett illuminates a crucial subject with knowledge, energy, conviction, and a passion for mind-expanding facts and true stories. --BOOKLIST, starred Barnett beautifully evokes universal themes of connecting cycles of water, air, wind, and earth to humankind across time and culture, leaving readers contemplating their deeper ties with the natural world. --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Author Information

Cynthia Barnett is an award-winning environmental journalist who has reported on water from the Suwannee River to Singapore. She is the author of two previous books, Mirage and Blue Revolution, a Boston Globe top 10 science book of 2011. She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband and children. Visit her website at cynthiabarnett.net.

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