Lauren Redniss is one of the most unique and creative science writers of our time - her combination of beautiful artwork, reporting, and poetic prose brings science to life in ways that words alone simply cannot. Thunder & Lighting is a fascinating meditation on how climate affects the earth's landscape and the lives inhabiting it. But also how the landscape of a book - the layout of its text, the images on its pages - impacts the telling of a story. This is an important book about a topic that couldn't be more important to us all. * Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks *
Lauren Redniss's Thunder & Lightning is such a strange and wonderful thing, the work of a first-class mind that refuses to submit to any categories or precedent. It's the way you wish science would always be taught -- with a mix of stories and facts, legend and hard science. * Dave Eggers *
Redniss has...shown us how human beings live with nature - fighting, coexisting, taming, predicting via leech barometer and radar and intuition...Redniss makes no claims for herself as an expert. She is guide and student, pulling us irresistibly into her interests and connecting the seemingly disparate threads with a combination of authority and enthusiasm. She is, to use a contemporary word, a curator: arranging information with a distinct aesthetic and a point of view...Colors change from chapter to chapter and page to page, evoking snow, ice, smog. In aggregate, the effect can be magical. * New York Times *
This is a terrific celebration of weather as an elemental force in not only our daily lives, but in our global stories, myths, history, and cultural identities... This book is not simply a collection of oddments and odd fellows, but rather a genuine demonstration of weather as a phenomena and how it is fantastical on both the symbolic and systematized levels. A highly atmospheric, entertainingly earnest, and intimate engrossment with the world's most popular topic of conversation. * Kirkus (starred review) *
Redniss's work is...some of the most inventive, rigorous and beguiling published anywhere in the world... Redniss is intellectually unique... There is an obscure kind of magic to Redniss's [work] that's reminiscent of all her subjects combined: showmanship, science, superstition, extreme forces beyond our ken. -- Gaby Wood-Lauren * Daily Telegraph *
