Meteorology

• The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies by Richard Hamblyn. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2001). The story of Luke Howard, whose pioneering work in London 200 years ago gave us the terms still used today for basic cloudforms like cirrus, stratus and cumulus -- bringing order to the seemingly endless variety of cloud formations.