Publishers Weekly
11/28/2022
Nautical history, memoir, and meteorology come together in this well-crafted debut from sea captain Rappaport. He digs into the science of sailing and expounds on the complex weather phenomena sailors encounter, explaining how kites and balloons helped discover the jet stream and detailing how a microburst (a powerful downward gust of wind) sank the Concordia in 2010. Discussing the innovations that have influenced life at sea, he relates how British naval officer Francis Beaufort developed a scale for wind velocity in the early 19th century that’s still in use today, and highlights the contributions of Croatian engineer Milutin Milankovic , whose calculations linking Earth’s orbit and ice ages offered new insights into the climate. The author holds an obvious reverence for all things sailing, as when he recounts that in spite of GPS technology being able to remotely detect his ship getting pushed off course in the Pacific, he remained at the mercy of unpredictable currents, an experience that connected him “with all the others who have crossed this ocean previously.” Rappaport’s focus on science over adventure is a welcome departure, and evocative prose ensures it goes down smoothly (“A cloudy puff of north wind meets us like a drink of cold beer”). This will deepen readers’ appreciation of life at sea. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
This is a must-read even for landlubbers.”—Booklist, starred review
“Vibrant accounts of sailing around the world... Fascinating journeys with an expert guide.”—Kirkus, starred review
"I loved this book. What a fabulous compendium it is of terror and disaster, expertise and courage, by a man who knows with true intimacy what he calls ‘the vast planetary engine’ of the weather. Chapter after chapter is filled with a vivid sense of being out at sea in storm and calm and every page has his decades of lived life embedded in it, years and years of looking, responding, making the good and necessary decisions. It feels written, in other words, by a man you would be more than happy to go to sea with."—Adam Nicolson, author of Life Between the Tides
“Reading the Glass is an extraordinary book by a modern-day Melville whose deep knowledge, boundless curiosity and endearingly wry humor make him the perfect guide to the world beyond our shores. Elliot Rappaport has completely transformed my awareness of the vast reaches of water that dominate our planet's surface, and of the debt we all owe to our ancestors who made a science and an art out of crossing them. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.”—Mark Vanhoenacker, author of Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot and Imagine a City
“By turns anecdotal, expository, and analytical, Elliot Rappaport's Reading the Glass illuminates the very real challenges of long-distance voyaging posed by fickle weather and a changing climate. Immensely rewarding and entertaining, and graced with vivid turns of phrase, this is one of the best introductions to the seafarer's world to appear in years.”—Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World
“We live on a planet—easy to forget in your secure suburban home, but not out on the open sea. The author provides a gripping account of what weather is, how it feels to be in the middle of it, and what we can expect going forward!”—Bill McKibben, author The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened
“Part Bill Nye, part Captain Cook, Elliot Rappaport leads an around-the-world adventure filled with eye-popping insights from the deepest depths to the high atmosphere. For those of us too chicken to cross thousands of miles on ships, Rappaport's action-packed logbook is full of history, wisdom, and hilarious stories from life on the open seas.”—Daniel Stone, national bestselling author of The Food Explorer and Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea, and the Shipwreck of the Titanic
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-12-27
The challenges of life at sea.
Rappaport, who has been a sea captain since 1992 and teaches at the Maine Maritime Academy, makes his book debut with vibrant accounts of sailing around the world. Central to his spirited, informative narrative is weather. “Like pilots, roofers, and mountain climbers,” he writes, “mariners are by default obsessed with the weather, immersed in it as part of their daily calculus.” Aboard the tall ships he helms to train students, weather updates come in the form of “nonstop streams of data from satellites, weather buoys, and balloons,” but all these technological supports do not substitute for “a live person sending information about pressure and wind velocity at a specific location.” Rappaport explains the deft choreography of daily life on a ship as well as the myriad variables that affect a journey. “The world’s great sailing routes,” he observes, “are less paved highways than patterns of occasional convenience, spun from the overall chaos of the atmosphere.” He provides clear explanations of technical terms, some familiar (trade winds, El Niño, jet stream) and some likely to be new to land-bound readers, such as cold tongue, loop currents, bora and mistral winds, and the difference between sea smoke and summer fog. The author also offers a taxonomy of clouds, sails, and instruments, and he is equally informative about the development of weather reporting and the history of sailing. His voyages have taken him to the South Pacific, Greenland, New Zealand, and Mediterranean ports, and he has braved the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties, a “subantarctic expanse of frigid westerly winds” named for the latitudes they occupy. The success of any voyage, Rappaport admits, depends on knowledge, preparation, meticulous attention to detail, and luck. “For the most part,” he writes, “real tales of heavy weather involve simple endurance—low-grade misery, a constant queasy vigilance in anticipation of some cascading mishap.”
Fascinating journeys with an expert guide.
