7.6 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print ISBN 978-0-7475-8976-1 Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing | 3.8/5 Goodreads Publication date 2010 Pages 336 pp Originally published 2010 Genre Science book Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Gavin Pretor-Pinney books, Popular Science books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Wavewatcher's Companion is a 2010 science book by Gavin Pretor-Pinney.
Contents
The book was the 2011 winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.
Theme
The book is a wide-ranging discussion on waves in all their forms and how waves are such an intimate part of our lives.
The book's topics include:
As Jennifer Ouellette of the Wall Street Journal describes, Pretor-Pinney 'employs a chatty, conversational tone, with clear technical explanations enlivened by real-world examples, whimsical asides, personal anecdotes and inventive analogies' to explain his subject.
Reception
The book was well received on its publication. Victoria Segal of The Guardian enthused that Pretor-Pinney "has the gifted teacher's knack for finding the right metaphor to hook the attention". Toby Clements of the Daily Telegraph felt it was a worthy sequel to Pretor-Pinney's previous surprise best-seller, 'The Cloudspotter's Guide.
The book was the 2011 winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, the prestigious award for science writing. Richard Holmes, the Chair of judging panel, said it was a 'highly unusual and outstandingly effective piece of popular science writing and that Pretor-Pinney "had managed to use relatively straight-forward science to transform the readers' perspective of the world around them". Richard Holmes noted the importance of the award stating “Popular science is an increasingly important genre, and this is an increasingly important prize".