Tides and the Ocean: Water's Movement Around the World, from Waves to Whirlpools

Innovative presentation of something beyond global that people rarely notice locally in their distracted lives

A little too pricey

Written by a surfer and paddleboarder, William Thomson, this is a large-sized coffee table book on such topics as tides, tsunamis, and plastic in the worlds oceans. Part travelogue and memoire, the text jumps around from topic to topic. Nearly each page of text on the left is accompanied by a graphic created by the author on the right. Unfortunately, the highly stylized graphics, done with tablet on computer, look like corporate logos or the designs you might find on a t-shirt at surf shop, and don't do a good job of conveying information. Thomson surrounds nearly every diagram with the same circle against a gray backdrop with serves no purpose. Information that is best presented in three-dimensions is often represented in two which is very confusing. Maps in the diagrams, of which there are very many, are simply black landmasses with no detail against a gray background and are very difficult to interpret. The graphics are very lazily created, often made of featureless polygons. The low point in the book for me was on page 111, where the author portrays an incoming meteor as long, two-tone gray rectangular solid with a red tail that looks like a jet exhaust. It looks a kid's wooden block from a building block set that is somehow is appearing on horizon. A wide-ranging traveler, the author describes many interesting places he's seen, like the Saltstaumen Whirlpool in Norway and the Qiantang River Tidal Bore, but there are no photographs whatsoever in the book, so it's hard to get an idea of what the author is talking about from just his laconic descriptions and distorted diagrams. The author is no scientist and no science writer with a gift for explanation, so it's not worth reading the book through for the few interesting tidbits of information you might glean. In short this is book that might be pretty to look at for some, but not for those who want to learn about tides, tsunamis, waves, or other aspects of oceanography.

Nice coffee table book for sure, but the very light, artsy-craftsy, tiny sans-serif type ruins for serious study.