Book Review of Rain by Cynthia Barnett
Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett I thought I knew rain. I’m not too proud to admit I cower in a corner during hurricanes. You try keeping your cool when screeching winds blow raindrops sideways from the sky. Seriously, sideways rain. I swear during Hurricane Ivan there were whitecaps in my toilet. Now, that’s rain. However, storms are only a small part of rain’s mystique. Cynthia Barnett, an award winning environmental journalist, gives a fascinating account of rain’s cultural, historic, scientific, religious, and, yes, even musical effect on humankind. There’s a surprise on every page, beginning with the shape of a shower. Rain is not a conglomeration of droplets. Instead it falls like “tiny parachutes, their tops rounded because of air pressure from below.” Since there is no standard global measurement for rain, its description is often personal. That’s why it rains cats and dogs here, but “shoemakers’ apprentices in Denmark, chair legs in Greece, r...