Ocean Book of the Month
Every month, The Ocean Project highlights a book focused on our blue planet or environmental sustainability. Books for all age groups will be covered, non-fiction and fiction, prose and poetry. If you have a suggestion, please let us know.
Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water, Our World
by Deborah Cramer
The official Smithsonian Ocean book site states:
Whoever we are, wherever we live, we need the sea. In Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World, Deborah Cramer shines new light on the meaning of the sea in our lives and introduces an ocean ethic we can, and must, live by. The latest book, by the author of Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage, is lavishly produced, including over 300 photographs, 28 maps, and an extensive bibliography.
Throughout this book, and in line with her various speaking engagements, Deborah reminds us that "carbon is the foundation of life &mdash it exists in every living organism and in every cell. while some is stilled, preserved in fossils over long stretches of time, most is continually recycled. Humans are mostly water and, after that, mostly carbon — carbon that has been passed down through the ages, from the flesh of a fish, the ear of an elephant, the leaves of a plant. somewhere in each of us is a cell whose carbon elements may have nourished the planet's nascent life."
 Deborah reveals in this sweeping look at Earth's biography, how the vital partnership between Earth and the life it nourishes has recently been disrupted. Today, a single terrestrial species, man, has begun to alter the health of the sea itself. The mark of humans on the seas is now everywhere — from the fertile waters of continental shelves to the icy reaches of the poles, from the dazzling diversity of coral reefs to the porous edge of estuaries.
Written in the passionate tradition of Rachel Carson, Smithsonian Ocean is at once a book for our time and for the ages. Carson wrote: "One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself: What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?" Cramer's powerful and inspiring message is equally a wake-up call: "We hold Earth's life-giving waters — and our future — in our hands." Our lives depend on the sea.
Edward O. Wilson suggests:
"It has often been proposed that the ultimate human future lies in space.
it has become clear instead that the strange world really holding our
future, now and forever, is the ocean. in Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water
Our World, Deborah Cramer explains why. authoritatively researched,
clearly written, and beautifully illustrated, this book is best in its class."
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Find out how you can help do your part at the Seas the Day action pages.
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Explore Deborah's Sea Around You website.
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Take a look inside Smithsonian Ocean at the HarperCollins website.
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If you are interested in reading this book but also want to be a conscious consumer, please visit your local library and check it out.
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If you're interested in purchasing this book, and then perhaps passing it along to a friend to spread the word, we encourage you to buy locally and from an independent bookseller. Please click on one of the two logos below to purchase a good read and help The Ocean Project.
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