"In the eight detailed, immensely readable essays of Waters of the World, Dry shows how over the past 150 years scientists have slowly come to see climate as a global system, and to recognize how human activity contributes to changes in the complex interactions of ice, oceans, and the atmosphere. . . . Dry looks beneath her subjects' masks with sympathy and curiosity. Noting their shared sense of a quest, at once playful and serious, in the end she turns back to the reader: 'They each, in their own way, sought something deeply meaningful from their engagement with the planet. So should we all.'"–Jenny Uglow "New York Review of Books"