The Wavewatcher's Companion by Pretor-Pinney, Gavin (2010) Hardcover
One bright February afternoon, on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting and started watching the waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, and decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don't just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us, and our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of our hearts, to the movement of food through our digestive tracts and of signals across our brains, waves are the transport systems of our bodies.
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Why did I pick this book?
I read Pretor-Pinney's first book - the Cloudspotters Guide- and loved it. That first book is all about clouds. What types of cloud there are, how they form, great anecdotes on clouds and all their shapes and sizes, mixed in with a good dose of exquisite British humor.
Finding this second book in a thrift store, and being a surfer, I just had to buy it.
The book
The book is structured similar to Pretor-Pinney's first book; with several chapters on different themes, loads of images with hilarious captions and short three-ish word notes in the margins. Pretor-Pinney covers the topic in both a general perspective and at times quite in depth. The second to last chapter, for example, explains all the details on the theory of light being both particles and waves, while the second chapter focuses on the bloodstream being a wave within the body.
There's also chapters on butterflies, cognitive links and synapses, etc.
My recommendation
If you've enjoyed Pretor-Pinney's first book, and you stumble across this book, then it's a great read. Pinney's retained his classical style of writing and applied it to a whole new topic.
If you're a surfer and thought this might be a good reference on how ocean waves form, than you better keep looking for a different book, as only three chapters are about waves in water, with one of them being the personal account of how Pinney went surfing in Hawaii.
If you're unfamiliar yet with Gaving Pretor-Pinney I without a doubt recommend his first book more than this one.