referencebooks (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} referencebooks) wrote,@ 2006-06-02 13:09:00 |
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| Entry tags: | culture, earth sciences, general knowledge, meteorology, science |
Encyclopedia of Water
Encyclopedia of Water
By David E. Newton
Published by Greenwood, 2003
This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 401 pages including the index, plus a preface, an introduction, and a classified guide to the articles.
See my entry for October 30, 2005, for the same author's Encyclopedia of Air, also published by Greenwood in 2003, along with another one called Encyclopedia of Fire.
Like Encyclopedia of Air, this encyclopedia looks at its subject in a vastly multi-disciplinary way, with articles covering topics in chemistry, biology, meteorology and other earth sciences, literature, mythology and religion, transportation, technology, visual arts, and history, as well as also providing many biographical entries on people whose work related to water and organizations that have to do with water. Here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "H" sequence, "See Also" references included:
- Haliae See Nymphs
- Hard Water
- Heavy Water
- Holy Water
- Holy Waters See Sacred Waters
- Hookah
- Hovercraft See Boats and Ships
- "Hubbly-Bubbly" See Hookah
- Human Water Needs See Biological Functions of Water; Desalination
- Humidity
- Hydrate
- Hydraulic Device
- Hydraulic Press See Bramah, Joseph
- Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, and Hydrodynamics
- Hydroelectric Power
The entries are written in relatively simple prose given the scientific subject matter of many of them. Since it's such a multi-disciplinary encyclopedia it wouldn't be appropriate to assume too much significant background knowledge, and the author doesn't. However, he doesn't shy away from providing mathematical formulae where relevant. So, there is a fairly decent amount of information included given the breadth of scope.
Reference books like this that take a feature of the world like water and air and look at it from such a wide range of disciplines are interesting, fun, and rather odd from a practical standpoint. Usually when someone is studying something like water it is from the perspective of a particular discipline, and they will find deeper information in a resource that is created specifically for that discipline. This stems from the fact that the work that people do is usually of a certain kind. When I try to think of who would find a book like this most useful, I keep coming back to the notion of a literary writer or a visual or conceptual artist who needs to pull together ideas about water for thematic, exploratory reasons. It is difficult to say who else might find a good use for this book, but you never know. It does have a lot of good information relating to water in it.
