A fascinating exploration into the natural history of lakes: what they are, how they behave, and how they function within the biosphere. In Lakes: Their Birth, Life, and Death, John Richard Saylor shows us just how deep our connection to these still waters run in a revealing look at lifegiving bodies of water. Think all lakes are the same?

Think again. Saylor leads an illuminating tour of the most fascinating lakes around the world. Whether it's Lake Vostok, located more than two miles beneath the surface of Antarctica, whose water was last exposed to the atmosphere perhaps a million years ago; Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the world's deepest and oldest lake formed by a rift in the earth's crust; or Lake Nyos, the so-called Killer Lake that exploded in 1986, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Along the way we learn all the many forms that lakes take - how they come to be and how they feed and support ecosystems - and what we stand to lose when lakes vanish.