The Cloudspotter's Guide

Gavin Pretor-Pinney is a self-confessed cloud nerd. His quirky book is both a paean to clouds and a practical guide to spotting and identifying them. It tells how Hindus believed the cumulus clouds were the spiritual cousins of elephants, how thermal air currents act on cumuli, and how to save a fortune in psychiatric bills by using the clouds as Rorschach images. Looking up will never be the same again.