Jonathan White (1)

NOTE: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my honest opinion of the book.

Jonathan White is a sailor, surfer, writer, and active marine conservationist who takes his readers on an adventure around the world to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides.

Some of the fascinating topics covered in this book include tidal bores, tidal anomalies, the difference between spring and neap tides, the science and history of forecasting tides, resonance, geophysics, the different methods of harvesting energy from the ocean, and a rather poor attempt to describe the effects of rising tides on civilization.

The author provides a superficial explanation of tidal mechanics – I really was looking for more information on this, especially in a book subtitled “the science and spirit of the ocean”. The “spirit” part of the subtitle takes over the book in terms of personal anecdotes, “travel writing”, tangential stories and philosophical musings that didn’t particularly appeal to me.

The book was also arranged in an odd manner by explaining specific tidal anomalies before explaining tides in general. Trying to sift the interesting scientific information out of all the extraneous text didn’t help with the conveyance of information. However, the book does provide numerous black & white photographs, explanatory diagrams and sixteen colour photographs.

If you want to know more about tides and like personal, chatty stories mixed with your science, then you will probably enjoy this book. If you want more science and less “fluff”, you need to look elsewhere.… (mais)