"This book began as a curriculum for a course of the same name at the Maine Maritime Academy, in Castine, Maine. ... [It is] a text that is written specifically for the sailor who is working his or her way up from the recreational level of sailing to the professional."--from Acknowledgments and Introduction.
A sea captain’s beautifully written tour of our planet, our oceans, and our ever-changing atmosphere “An extraordinary book by a modern-day Melville.”—Mark Vanhoenacker • “Immensely rewarding and entertaining.”—Lincoln Paine • “Full of history, wisdom, and hilarious stories from life on the open seas.”—Daniel Stone What’s in a cloud? Did you know that water vapor is invisible and actually lighter than dry air? What separates a tropical storm from a winter blizzard? And what exactly is El Niño? Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather is crucial to the safety of vessels and their crews. In Reading the Glass, he offers a sailor’s-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere and unveils the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate. Told through a series of tall ship voyages, Rappaport’s narrative takes readers from the icy seas of Greenland to the Roaring Forties, places where one can experience all four seasons in an hour. He navigates the turbulent waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, en route to storied port cities of the Mediterranean. In the vast tropical Pacific he crosses the equator, where heat, moisture, and unsettled winds churn out powerful squalls, and drops anchor in isolated ports of call. He explores wide swathes of ocean to explain how the trade winds have carried ships westward for centuries, and how ancient Polynesian explorers pushed back the other way, leveraging their mastery of waves and weather to achieve what may be humanity's greatest navigational achievement. Written in stunning prose, brimming with wisdom, curiosity, and humor, Reading the Glass brilliantly blends science and memoir to reveal how weather has shaped our oceans, our history, and ourselves.
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'Hailstorm Over Truk Lagoon' remains the authoritative reference book about the US Navy carrier raid of 17/18 February 1944 on the Japanese naval and supply base Truk, in the East Caroline Islands. This edition presented here adds later information and pictures to the book, and corrects errors. . . . The new discoveries and other changes, as well as new information made it necessary to issue a revised edition of 'Hailstorm over Truk Lagoon.' The text of this edition has been generally updated to 1990. New finds, observations or conditions seen at the popular wrecks during my diving visit in spring 1991 have been incorporated. All this is part of the ongoing research about Truk.Ó From the Foreword
