Sahara

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"If you traveled across the United States from Boston to San Diego, you still wouldn't have crossed the Sahara," write de Villiers and Hirtle, painting a vivid picture of this most extraordinary place. They chart the genesis and course of Atlantic hurricanes, many of which are born in the Tibesti mountains of northern Chad, showing that the Sahara, which has a strong influence on weather patterns the world over, is much closer than it seems. They offer a description of the physics of windblown sand and the formation of dunes and describe in detail the massive aquifers that lie beneath the desert, some filled with water that predates the appearance of humankind on Earth. They marvel at the jagged mountains and at ancient cave paintings deep in the desert that reveal the Sahara was a verdant grassland 10,000 years ago; what's more, this cycle has been repeated several times, and may well repeat again. ----------- A glittering geographic tour of the astonishing history, peoples, climates, creatures, sights and sounds of the largest and most austere desert on earth. Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara was a temperate grassland - petrified trees mark where forests used to stand, and former riverbeds are rich in the petrified bones of hippos, elephants, zebras, buffalo and gazelles. Then a slight shift in the earth's axis transformed it with astonishing speed, creating a vast desert where sand dunes arise virtually overnight. Throughout the millennia, diverse populations have struggled to make this severe landscape home. Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle chronicle the desert's nations and peoples and the legacies they have left to the sand: stone circles older than Stonehenge, Roman aqueducts, remnants of Greek fields and vineyards, and the ruins of palaces and temples from the great empires of Old Africa. Illuminated by written testimonies of past travellers, Sahara conveys the majesty, mystery and abundance of the desert's life in an evocative biography of the land and its people.