The Water Book

(London: Headline, 2015) 9781472209559. 232 x 151 mm; pictorial wrappers; pp. (viii) + 376, incl. index. Fine condition. "It pours from our taps and falls from the sky. We drink it, wash with it and couldn't live without it. Yet, on closer examination, water is a very strange substance; look closer still and it reveals itself as a key to a scientific story on the biggest of canvases. In The Water Book Alok Jha takes us on a dual journey. First, a physical one as we join him on an expedition to Antarctica, where the power and importance of water is made manifest in the great ice fields, icebergs and world-shaping weather systems of the Southern Ocean. And secondly, on a parallel scientific voyage that will take us from the origins of water in the Big Bang, through the beginnings of life on Earth, the shaping of our civilisations and out into space again as water becomes the key marker in our search for life beyond the solar system and beyond. After reading The Water Book you will never look at a glass of water in quite the same way again." .