| > Oceanography > Issues > Archive > Volume 24, Number 1 |
2011, Oceanography 24(1):180–182, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2011.18
BOOK REVIEW | The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters
Book Information | Reviewer | First Paragraphs | Full Review | Citation
Book Information
The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters
By Bruce Parker, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 304 pages, ISBN 978-0-230-61637-0,
Hardcover $28 US, Kindle $14.99 US
Reviewer
Chris Garrett | Retired, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
First Paragraphs
Bruce Parker is the former chief scientist of NOAA's National Ocean Service and is now a visiting professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. As well as his personal contributions to topics such as tide prediction, in 1990 he organized a fine symposium on tidal hydrodynamics, with the proceedings published as a very useful volume with that title.
The present book, aimed at a general audience, is clearly a labor of love based on the author's passionate interest in the sea and his conviction of the value of prediction. This enthusiasm for the subject is conveyed in the book's subtitle and in a short introductory chapter entitled "When the sea turns against us—escaping the sea's fury through prediction." In this chapter, he foreshadows topics such as the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the 1970 storm surge in the Bay of Bengal, to be discussed in more detail later in the book. ...
Full Review
Citation
Garrett, C. 2011. Review of The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters, by B. Parker. Oceanography 24(1):180–182, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2011.18.