Eb Flow

Eleven-year-old Jett has moved back home for the summer to live with his unconventional Grandma Jo, after "a rotten bad year" in a new town. Jett is bringing along a secret. Will Grandma Jo help Jett come to terms with his mistakes?

Ebb and Flow was named one of 2007’s "best science books" by Peter Calamai, science editor of the Toronto Star [Dec. 30, 2007]. He calls it a "wonderful resource book. Tom Koppel seems to have visited or read about every place with unusual tides and water currents, yet he wears this scholarship lightly." Tides have shaped our world. They have carved out shorelines, transformed early life on Earth, and altered the course of human civilization. Tides frustrated Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and aided General MacArthur. They govern the way our planet moves, provide us with an alternative source of energy, and may be aggravating global climate change. Drawing on science, history, and personal memories, Koppel’s fascinating book engages and enlightens, demonstrating that a subject we take for granted affects all our lives. He weaves together three grand narratives, exploring how tides impact coasts and marine life, how they have altered human history and development, and how science has striven to understand the surprisingly complex way in which tides actually work.

Challenges tradition to show how developments in international relations repeat themselves; we may soon experience a return to past trends.

Migration shapes the lives of those who move and transforms the geographies and economies of their points of departure and destinations alike. The water sector, and the availability of water itself, implicitly and explicitly shape migration flows. Ebb and Flow: Volume 1. Water, Migration, and Development presents new global evidence to advance our understanding of how fluctuations in water availability, as induced by rainfall shocks, influence internal migration, and hence regional development. It finds that cumulative water deficits result in five times as much migration as water excess does. But there are important nuances in why and when these events lead to migration. Where there is extreme poverty and migration is costly, water deficits are more likely to trap people than induce them to migrate. Water shocks can also influence who migrates. Workers leaving regions because of water deficits are often less advantaged than typical migrants and bring with them lower skills, raising important implications for the migrants themselves and receiving regions. Cities are the destination of most internal migrants, but even here, water scarcity can haunt them. Water shortages in urban areas, which lead to so-called day zero events, can significantly slow urban growth and compound the vulnerability of migrants. No single policy can be completely effective at protecting people and their assets from water shocks. Instead, the report puts forth a menu of overlapping and complementary policy options that target both people and places to improve livelihoods and turn water-induced crises into opportunities for growth. A key message is that policies that focus on reducing the impacts of water shocks must be complemented by strategies that broaden opportunities and build the longterm resilience of communities. Doing so will give individuals more agency to determine the best outcome for themselves and to thrive wherever they may choose to locate.

An exploration of water's power to heal us, inspire us and offer us spiritual meaning. This is a feminist reimagining of the meaning of power through the lens of water. Easkey offers a range of wellness practices to encourage the reader to connect with water as healer, restoring a relationship of care. Our strength lies in being soft like water. This book is about the power we gain by connecting to water. It’s about how we can restore our relationship with the world's different bodies of water, and by doing so, restore both the water and ourselves. By sharing Easkey's own experiences as surfer and marine scientist, as well as those of many of her mentors who are at the forefront of water protection and activism around the world, it guides readers into reimagining the spirituality of water and restoring our innate connection with this lifeblood of the planet. The book also provides the reader with water-inspired strategies to restore calm, reduce stress and soothe anxiety. These range from simple breathing and visualization exercises to undertaking a journey from a water source to the ocean in order to forge a deep connection with the water. The emphasis is as much on the benefit to water as it is to the individual, and on creating a culture of reciprocity and care. By regaining this lost connection with water, we learn to develop an empathic connection with the force of all life and in the process restore our own hearts and minds.

Drawing on history, science, and personal memories, Koppel demonstrates the complexity of tides and how they affect all our lives.

Ebb & Flow is a journey of brokenness and wholeness, a sabbatical of sorts, a glimpse of craziness dashed with an array of solitude. A myriad of Agape, Eros, Philia and Storge epithets. A spiritual awakening, a revolutionary moment, a period of redemption and an act of faith. It's my painting but your color, your auntie's canvass but your cousin's brush, your mama's couture but your daddy's fine design, your uncles' swagger but your grandparent's wisdom. It's the ups and downs; the ins and outs, the cross and the criss cross of who we are. It's a surge of cultivating energy, a receding stream of purity; it's my space, in time with the one I love, Always.