Eric Scigliano – författare

Curtis Ebbesmeyer is no ordinary scientist. He's been a consulting oceanographer for multinational firms and a lead scientist on international research expeditions, but he's never held a conventional academic appointment. He seized the world's imagination as no ordinary scientist could when he and his worldwide network of beachcomber volunteers traced the ocean's currents using thousands of sneakers and plastic bath toys spilled from storm-tossed freighters. Now, for the first time, Ebbesmeyer tells the story of his lifelong struggle to solve the sea's mysteries, and shares his most surprising discoveries. He recounts how flotsam has changed the course of history-leading Viking mariners to safe harbours, Columbus to the New World, and Japan to open up to the West - and how it may even have made the origin of life possible. He explores the vast floating garbage patches and waste-heaped junk beaches that collect the flotsam and jetsam of industrial society. Finally, he reveals the music-like mathematical order in oceanic gyres and the threats that global warming and disintegrating plastic waste pose to the seas ...and to us.

______________‘A rich and enthusiastic study ... Reads like an extended love letter to an animal whose history is closely tangled with ours' - Daily Telegraph‘Scigliano appears to have interviewed every living enthusiast available, is naturally an enthusiast himself, and has produced a book exhaustive in scope but utterly entertaining to read' - Independent on Sunday‘A passionate account of why humans fall for these fascinating and remarkable creatures' - Sunday Times______________For millennia, people all over the world have revered, adored and exploited elephants. In Thailand, a pregnant woman might duck under an elephant's belly to encourage an easy delivery; a tycoon has built an elephant-shaped skyscraper; and pirate loggers feed amphetamines to their elephants to make them haul backbreaking loads. In India, worshippers dance with gilded tuskers at ecstatic temple festivals. Scientists have proposed to restore lost ecosystems by reintroducing the elephants and mammoths that once ruled them. And generation after generation of readers have delighted in Babar, Horton and Dumbo. In a kaleidoscopic account rich in historic lore, surprising science and exotic adventure, Eric Scigliano traces an enduring, extraordinary relationship between species and shows how it still haunts and inspires us today.

Discover the fascinating, crucial, and often dangerous relationship between Michelangelo and the stone quarries of Carrara in this clear-eyed and well-researched exploration that “recounts the artist''s large life and lasting works with care and reverence” (Booklist).No artist looms so large in Western consciousness and culture as Michelangelo Buonarroti, the most celebrated sculptor of all time. And no place on earth provides a stone so capable of simulating the warmth and vitality of human flesh and incarnating the genius of a Michelangelo as the statuario of Carrara, the storied marble mecca at Tuscany''s northwest corner. It was there, where shadowy Etruscans and Roman slaves once toiled, that Michelangelo risked his life in dozens of harrowing expeditions to secure the precious stone for his Pietà, Moses, and other masterpieces. Many books have recounted Michelangelo’s achievements in Florence and Rome. Michelangelo’s Mountain goes beyond all of them, revealing his escapades and ordeals in the spectacular landscape that was the third pole of his tumultuous career and the third wellspring of his art. Eric Scigliano brings this haunting place and eternally fascinating artist to life in a sweeping tale peopled by popes and poets, mad dukes and mythic monsters, scheming courtiers and rough-hewn quarrymen. He recounts the saga of the David, the improbable masterpiece that Michelangelo created against all odds, of the twin Hercules that he tried to erect beside it, and of the Salieri-like nemesis who snatched away the commission, turning a sculptural testament to liberty into a bitter symbol of tyranny and giving Florence the colossus it loves to hate. In showing how the artist, land, and stone transformed one another, Scigliano brings fresh insight to Michelangelo''s most cherished works and illuminates his struggles with the princes and potentates of Carrara, Rome, and Medici Florence, who raised intrigue to a high art.