The Breath of the Gods by Simon Winchester

 

I've read a few other of Winchester's books about natural (mostly geological) things in the past, and I have enough brainspace dedicated to weather and such stuff that I figured this would be worth reading. It is emphatically worth reading. Winchester has a lot in common with Mary Roach, not least in his occasional discursiveness, at least in this book, where he's writing more about concepts and some thumbnail events to illustrated them for the interested (and perhaps somewhat knowledgeable) layman--something like his books on Krakatoa or the San Francisco earthquake can get more detailed about more singular events, which is a different sort of book. His prose is solid, rising to come impressive occasional heights, though his voice remains thoroughly British. The choice to structure the book to parallel the Beaufort Wind Scale is particularly clever, lets him work from winds people barely notice to winds that are impossible to ignore. Really readable and packed with information.