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Product Description
Review
This amazing little book will gladen the hearts of forteans...delightful book. (Jay Rath, Forteans )
Thorough investigation. (Mick Herron, Geographical )
This has to be the perfect beach book... (Mick Herron, Geographical )
'Sand' is serious and entertaining...nothing like it has been published before. (Andrew Robinson, Nature )
Masterful, imaginative and thoughtful... combining sicence with literary and popular works. (Journal of Aeolian Researc )
Welland provides an appealing blend of science and the imagination. (Andrew Robinson, Nature )
Thorough investigation. (Mick Herron, Geographical )
This has to be the perfect beach book... (Mick Herron, Geographical )
'Sand' is serious and entertaining...nothing like it has been published before. (Andrew Robinson, Nature )
Masterful, imaginative and thoughtful... combining sicence with literary and popular works. (Journal of Aeolian Researc )
Welland provides an appealing blend of science and the imagination. (Andrew Robinson, Nature )
Product Description
This book is all about sand - sand in individual grains, each one a little different; sand in piles; sand in shoals and dunes; the science of sand but also, shot through the book, sand and imagination - the art and the music of sand. Did you know that the Sand Mountain in Nevada emits a low C, while dunes in Chile sound an F, and those in Morocco a G#? For all its ubiquity, sand is an extraordinary substance. For scientists, it is important in many ways: it represents the crushed remains of past rock, and builds up into layers in lake and ocean beds, layers of sandstone from which we can extract the history of deep time; its erosion creates complex landscapes of mounds and dunes which move in characteristic ways; its grains are remarkable individually and in their behaviour together as a granular material. And to travellers, poets and artists, the deserts it forms are full of grandeur and pathos. Michael Welland is a geologist who has a passion for sand. He shows that truly, one can see a world, both in space and time, in a grain of sand.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anybody who believes that sand is composed of uniform, rounded
grains of quartz whose main use is to make cement and glass will not
have read Michael Welland's recent book, entitled simply, "Sand". In the
book Welland sets out to answer the questions: Sand? What is it?
What use is it? Where does it come from? How did it get there? He
answers these questions as perhaps only an ardent enthusiast can, and
along the way he answers a hundred other questions cataloguing the
properties, uses and beauties of this ubiquitous, essential, constituent
of our planet (and its immediate neighbours)
He describes the erosion of a grain of sand in the mountains and we
follow its progress to the sea along a river system, we track its path
from offshore sand bar to sand bank to beach until it is eventually
deposited in the ocean deep where it awaits its turn for eventual
relithification, uplift and cycle repeat. His description of onshore sand
dunes and sand seas is enhanced by personal observations from his
work with the British Geological Survey in Oman and his work in the
Sahara
With the help of "geological forensics" Welland explains that we can
unravel the history of sand assemblages stretching back over
numerous erosional/depositional cycles, while at the same time
admitting that that are still a few intriguing gaps in our knowledge that
remain to be solved
The style is modern-light, and the book is written with humour. It is
more Bill Bryson than university lecture and all the more enjoyable for
that. The extensive bibliography gives some idea of the research
involved, and judging by the interesting asides that remain, one can see
that one of Mike's main problems was deciding what to leave out of the
final manuscript rather than what to include. A book for the inquisitive
-minded amateur, it is obviously a labour of love
grains of quartz whose main use is to make cement and glass will not
have read Michael Welland's recent book, entitled simply, "Sand". In the
book Welland sets out to answer the questions: Sand? What is it?
What use is it? Where does it come from? How did it get there? He
answers these questions as perhaps only an ardent enthusiast can, and
along the way he answers a hundred other questions cataloguing the
properties, uses and beauties of this ubiquitous, essential, constituent
of our planet (and its immediate neighbours)
He describes the erosion of a grain of sand in the mountains and we
follow its progress to the sea along a river system, we track its path
from offshore sand bar to sand bank to beach until it is eventually
deposited in the ocean deep where it awaits its turn for eventual
relithification, uplift and cycle repeat. His description of onshore sand
dunes and sand seas is enhanced by personal observations from his
work with the British Geological Survey in Oman and his work in the
Sahara
With the help of "geological forensics" Welland explains that we can
unravel the history of sand assemblages stretching back over
numerous erosional/depositional cycles, while at the same time
admitting that that are still a few intriguing gaps in our knowledge that
remain to be solved
The style is modern-light, and the book is written with humour. It is
more Bill Bryson than university lecture and all the more enjoyable for
that. The extensive bibliography gives some idea of the research
involved, and judging by the interesting asides that remain, one can see
that one of Mike's main problems was deciding what to leave out of the
final manuscript rather than what to include. A book for the inquisitive
-minded amateur, it is obviously a labour of love
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A simply lovely read. Written with an enthusiasm and elegance that reminded me of Richard Fortey (and I can't say better than that!)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fab book. It shows how alive the planet is - and how human culture is impacting on it.
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