Defining The Wind (2004)

Defining The Wind began with Scott Huler's intense admiration, as a young copy editor, for the lean poetry of the verbal descriptions (''leaves and small twigs in constant motion'') accompanying a wind chart devised in 1806 and still in use by sailors and meteorologists. Some 20 years (and a brush with a hurricane) later, the NPR regular embarked on a globe-trotting odyssey to learn more about Sir Francis Beaufort and the famous scale that bears his name. His thoroughly researched account of a marvelous collision of forces (natural, political, and creative) is as invigorating as a cool ocean breeze.