Weather: A Visual Guide (Visual Guides) [Hardcover]

Bruce Buckley (Author), Edward J. Hopkins (Author), Richard Whitaker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2004 | Series: Visual Guides

An introductory guide to understanding weather and its effect on our lives.

It is human nature to try to understand, predict and control the weather that affects crops, wildlife...even one's mood. The world's favorite topic of conversation is also the subject of increasing scientific study.

Weather explores how weather works and its effect at a local and global level, revealing the importance of climate in determining landscape, flora and fauna, and the overall quality of our lives.

Using dramatic never-before-published aerial and satellite photography, this book provides up-to-the-minute information about a fascinating spectrum of natural phenomena:

• Extreme weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes
• Natural events that affect the weather
• Forecasting and predicting weather
• How weather affects life on Earth
• Climate change.

Colorful diagrams provide at-a-glance understanding about complex issues with explanations for interpreting weather signs and charts. Weather simplifies the many aspects of climate with easy-to-understand text and lively illustrations.

(20050122)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–A comprehensive academic resource with information and glorious color photographs on virtually every aspect of weather. Although written by three different meteorologists, the text flows seamlessly from one topic to another. Grouped in broad subject areas, spreads cover what makes weather, weather extremes, watching the weather, and current and changing global climate. The thoroughly labeled photos show seemingly every type of weather on every continent and the Earth from outer space. Clear, colorful graphics clarify concepts that cannot be shown in photographs, such as the energy cycle or types of lightning. Approximately three-fourths of this volume is devoted to these outstanding images. The print is small, providing more information than one might expect. The content goes beyond simple weather to include a discussion of climate and its effect on the flora and fauna of a region. An excellent resource. –Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The meteorologist authors of Weather set the local and seasonal conditions that every person experiences within the context of the global forces that generate weather. Each force, such as giant atmospheric convection cells, is illustrated with a combination of a diagram, satellite photographs, ground-level photographs (often depicting the destruction wrought by violent storms), and info-laden captions. The immediate manifestations of these cells, all torqued by the earth's rotation, are the moving cold and warm fronts that produce winds, clouds, and precipitation. The book's imagery depicts these phenomena in detail and establishes for readers a factual and even aesthetic foundation for further exploration. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Firefly Books (August 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552979571
• ISBN-13: 978-1552979570
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 9.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,501,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book for general readers., September 10, 2005

By 

Charlie Brown (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Weather: A Visual Guide (Visual Guides) (Hardcover)

Despite the very bad reviews in here, I decided to go to Barnes and

Noble, took a look at the book, and bought it in there. After moving to Seattle, I wondered why the weather in Northwestern America might be like this, and Katrina desaster was also a motivation for me to want to understand how weather works. And I have no desire to try to understand it in expert level (nor do I have time to do so).

First of all, this book is not for weather majors or experts.

this book is for general readers who don't have a clue about how weather works but want to know. For that purpuse, I haven't found any better book than this. I'm not a geologist or weather expert. So, I can't say how accurate this book is. However this book explains things so well with a lot of beautiful pictures. Saying that this book doesn't have any content, all misinformation, etc. is simply over-exaggerating minor mistakes that any books might have. Go to the bookstore and see it yourself. You will love this book.

Even though you don't like the content for any reason, the beautiful pictures themselves will worth the money. However, there is no reason why casual readers who want to know about whether would not like the contents of this book. Don't let skeptic's over-exaggerated nitpicking discourage your owning this wonderful book.

This is one of the books from which you can learn science without studying, and with pleasure. And you don't even need to have any science background to read this book. All you need is curiosity. As a reader, I thank authors to create this wonderful book.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Mix, February 22, 2005

By 

Randy Given (Manchester, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weather: A Visual Guide (Visual Guides) (Hardcover)

This is a good mix. It may only be four stars if you are looking for particularly things alone (e.g., educational, photos, etc.). However, as a combination, it does a very good job and one that I will keep. Some of the simple things, like the cloud charts, make it much easier for the novice and don't cloud the issue like more complicated books.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misinformation, errors, clueless and useless content..., July 29, 2005

By 

Ken Walsh (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weather: A Visual Guide (Visual Guides) (Hardcover)

Wow, it has really been a long time since I've seen a book this awful. First though, let me say the book does contain a nice collection of pretty pictures. That's about all its got going for it.

First off, the book has no actual content. Every two pages is spread of pictures with a small paragraph loosely relating to a supposed topic. The pictures don't really relate, however. So basically, you're not going to learn anything about weather from the text.

Fine, it is a "visual" guide. There is a major fundamental flaw here as well. The captions of the photos are laced with errors, misinformation, misleading statements and demonstrate an apalling level of cluelessness on the part of the authors/editors. It is very clear someone went trolling through the stock photo agencies and grabbed some "weather related" photos and then more or less made up captions for them.

I have only a limited background in the topics covered, but just in thumbing through I found numerous errors including obviously incorrect dates, geographic errors and claims that images were of phenomona that they clearly don't represent. Worse still, a wide varity of images are also altered with no indication that they are artists renderings or photo adaptations.

In summary, pure fluff, minimal content, and most of the content that does exist is flat out wrong, either through neglect, ineptitude or plain fabrication.

Flip through it in the library or bookstore but otherwise don't waste your money or encourage future publication of this low-rate psuedo-science garbage.