The Infinite Tides

Mathematical genius. Brilliant engineer. Revered astronaut. Keith Corcoran is all of these things and more, but his otherworldly talents do nothing to prepare him for the tragedy that befalls his family, or its irrevocable outcomes. After a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, Keith returns to a house that has already ceased to be a home - emptied entirely of furniture and the people he loves. It is here that Keith tries to make sense of the ghosts, the memories and the feelings that he can barely acknowledge. His experiences in space quickly fade into the distant past. What remain in their wake are endlessly interlocking cul-de-sacs, big box stores and enormous parking lots. Within this seemingly hopeless expanse, an eccentric man from a distant country presents an opportunity for redemption. Their unlikely friendship leads Keith to an understanding of all he has lost, and a sense of how to live under the weight of gravity. The Infinite Tides is a captivating and comic tragedy about love, loss and resilience. An indelible and nuanced portrait of modern life as viewed through the prism of American suburbia, it tenderly illuminates the strengths and weaknesses that flow through us all.

Finally, someone has written a comprehensive, easily readable explanation of the tides on earth that is both simple enough for students and solid enough for their professors. Step by step, by analogy and illustration, "Beyond the Moon" describes how the cyclical motion of the near solar system is impressed upon the earth's oceans, and how the hydraulics over the continental shelf and the geography of the coastline orchestrate this rhythm into the bewildering variety of tide patterns seen around the globe. This volume demystifies the complexity of the tides by systematically examining its many constituents and demonstrates that: ?Nature is, at once, awesome in complexity and beautiful in simplicity.?Contents: The Tides in History. The Challenge of Understanding the Tides on EarthThe Lunar OrbitSolar Influences and Solar?Lunar Interaction. Gravitation and Tractal ForcesCelestial HarmonicsThe Coriolis Force and Oceanic Amphidromes. Coastal Kelvin Waves. Tidal Currents. Sea LevelThe Seiche Effect and Basins of Oscillation. Tidal IntermixingCoastal Geography and Near Shore Topography, Resonant Co-Oscillation and Sustained ForcingShallow Estuaries and Tidal Pumping. Tidal BoresThe Computation of the Tide-Tables. Chaos TheoryThe Weather and the Tides. Atmospheric TidesTidal Influence on Marine Biology. The Tides and Saltwater Fishing. Practical Tide-Table Information for Coastal BoatersThe Constituents of the Tides on Earth. Synopsis of Tidal InfluencesEpilogueDefinitions Readership: Undergraduate oceanography students and secondary science students, as well as their teachers. The general public with an interest in science and nature. Coastal boaters, sailors, yachtsmen, and fishermen.

A TIME Magazine Best Book of 2022 “I loved it.” —Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace "Brilliant, elegant, and unsparing." —Emma Cline "Irresistible... I read it in an afternoon but I'll be thinking about it for a long time." —Douglas Stuart, author of Young Mungo From an astounding new voice in Canadian literature comes an intoxicating, compact novel about a woman who walks out of her life and washes up in a seaside town After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy seaside town with a dead cellphone and barely any money. Mired in her grief, Mara detaches from the outside world and spends her days of self-imposed exile scrounging for food and swimming in the night ocean. In her state of emotional extremis, the sea at the town's edge is rendered bleak, luminous, implacable. As her money runs out and tourist season comes to a close, Mara finds a job at the local wine store. There, she meets Simon, the shop's soft-spoken, lonely owner. Confronted with the possibility of connection with Simon and the slow return of her desires and appetites, the reasons for her flight begin to emerge. Reminiscent of works by Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill, and Sheila Heti, Tides is a spare, visceral debut novel about the nature of selfhood, intimacy, and the private narratives that shape our lives. A shattering and unforgettable debut.

Adam Nicolson explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rock pools with a scientist’s curiosity and a poet’s wonder in this beautifully illustrated book. The sea is not made of water. Creatures are its genes. Look down as you crouch over the shallows and you will find a periwinkle or a prawn, a claw-displaying crab or a cluster of anemones ready to meet you. No need for binoculars or special stalking skills: go to the rocks and the living will say hello. Inside each rock pool tucked into one of the infinite crevices of the tidal coastline lies a rippling, silent, unknowable universe. Below the stillness of the surface course different currents of endless motion—the ebb and flow of the tide, the steady forward propulsion of the passage of time, and the tiny lifetimes of the rock pool’s creatures, all of which coalesce into the grand narrative of evolution. In Life Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson investigates one of the most revelatory habitats on earth. Under his microscope, we see a prawn’s head become a medieval helmet and a group of “winkles” transform into a Dickensian social scene, with mollusks munching on Stilton and glancing at their pocket watches. Or, rather, is a winkle more like Achilles, an ancient hero, throwing himself toward death for the sake of glory? For Nicolson, who writes “with scientific rigor and a poet’s sense of wonder” (The American Scholar), the world of the rock pools is infinite and as intricate as our own. As Nicolson journeys between the tides, both in the pools he builds along the coast of Scotland and through the timeline of scientific discovery, he is accompanied by great thinkers—no one can escape the pull of the sea. We meet Virginia Woolf and her Waves; a young T. S. Eliot peering into his own rock pool in Massachusetts; even Nicolson’s father-in-law, a classical scholar who would hunt for amethysts along the shoreline, his mind on Heraclitus and the other philosophers of ancient Greece. And, of course, scientists populate the pages; not only their discoveries, but also their doubts and errors, their moments of quiet observation and their thrilling realizations. Everything is within the rock pools, where you can look beyond your own reflection and find the miraculous an inch beneath your nose. “The soul wants to be wet,” Heraclitus said in Ephesus twenty-five hundred years ago. This marvelous book demonstrates why it is so. Includes Color and Black-and-White Photographs

In his most brilliant and powerful novel, Pat Conroy tells the story of Tom Wingo, his twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the family into which they were born. Set in New York City and the lowcountry of South Carolina, the novel opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister's suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah's psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself. With passion and a rare gift of language, the author moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos' only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein's husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah's mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family. Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry and a lost way of life. His lyric gifts, abundant good humor, and compelling storytelling are well known to readers of The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline. The Prince of Tides continues that tradition yet displays a new, mature voice of Pat Conroy, signaling this work as his greatest accomplishment.

A Journey Through Tides is a fully comprehensive text on the history of tides. It brings together geology and oceanography and discusses, in detail, new ideas that have emerged about how tectonics and tides interact. In addition, the book provides an overview of Earth’s history, from the perspective of tidal changes, while also highlighting other fascinating phenomena (e.g., solid Earth tides and links between tides and earthquakes). Sections cover an introduction to tides for oceanography students and scientists from other disciplines, cover the Earth’s deep time processes, and include several case studies of specific topics/processes that apply to a earth science disciplines. There are many other processes that drive and modify the tides, hence this book also describes why there is a tide, how it has changed since Earth’s early days, and what consequences the tides, and changes in the tides, have on other parts of the Earth system. Presents a fully comprehensive overview on tides that goes beyond the field of oceanography Provides a state-of-the-art review on science related to tides, a fundamental element in the Earth System that regulates our planet Explores the limits of our knowledge, including much ongoing research on deep time tides, future tides, tides in exoplanets, and more Includes a website with tectonic animations and associated tidal evolution videos for interactive learning

When high school senior Noah Gallagher and his adopted teenage sister, Lo, go to live with their grandmother in her island cottage for the summer, they don’t expect much in the way of adventure. Noah has landed a marine biology internship, and Lo wants to draw and paint, perhaps even to vanquish her struggles with bulimia. But then things take a dramatic turn for them both when Noah mistakenly tries to save a mysterious girl from drowning. This dreamlike, suspenseful story—deftly told from multiple points of view—dives deeply into selkie folklore while examining the fluid nature of love and family.