Book Reviews

Deep Blue Reads: Preparing the Ghost, by Matthew Gavin Frank

By Elizabeth Weinberg ⋅ April 2, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

Preparing the Ghost is almost certainly one of the strangest books about giant squid out there. Of course, I say that fully aware that there may not be many books about giant squid in existence, and fully unaware of the content and style of those books, having never read another book about giant squid. […]

Deep Blue Reads: Octopus!: The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea, by Katherine Harmon Courage

By Elizabeth Weinberg ⋅ January 16, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

I will be honest: I almost chucked this book clear across the room while reading it. It’s not that Katherine Harmon Courage’s Octopus! is at its root a bad book. It’s not poorly written—though at times Courage relies on cutesy prose, referring to octopus digestive tracts as “poopers,” for example, or discussing neuroscientists who endeavor […]

Deep Blue Reads: Blue Mind, by Wallace J. Nichols

By Elizabeth Weinberg ⋅ November 17, 2014 ⋅ Post a comment

Oceanographers, take note: you’re probably happier than the rest of us. That, at least, seems likely given the central thesis of Wallace J. Nichols’ Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do—a title that handily […]

Deep Blue Reads: The Reef: A Passionate History, by Iain McCalman

By Elizabeth Weinberg ⋅ October 16, 2014 ⋅ Post a comment

It’s often easy to think of science outside of its social and historical contexts, as something pure, empirical, and incorruptible. But each drop of knowledge inevitably depends on what was uncovered and refined in the decades and centuries before it, as well as how it fits with the social and cultural opinions of its time. […]

Deep Blue Reads: Blue Urbanism, by Timothy Beatley

By Elizabeth Weinberg ⋅ September 16, 2014 ⋅ Post a comment

I lived in Seattle for about a year before I started to really notice the water. It’s an impressive feat, when you think about it – Seattle is a city surrounded on almost all sides by water: Lake Washington to the east, Puget Sound to the west, and Lake Union and the ship canal cutting […]

Deep Blue Reads: The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert

By Elizabeth Weinberg ⋅ August 7, 2014 ⋅ One comment

As a novelist writing about oceanography, I spend a decent amount of time parsing scientific studies. Over the past several years my vocabulary has expanded to include terms like band saturation, turbidity currents, and foraminifera—phrases and words that had not existed in my wildest dreams when I first started writing. I’ve relied on studies and […]