Scott Huler

Investigates the systems of infrastructure that sustain the world and the cultures of historical periods, following various elements, from electricity and pavement to water and waste disposal, back to their origins and people who operate them.

A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work

On the Grid

The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry

Defining the Wind

Details the author's efforts to retrace the footsteps of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca as recorded in "The Odyssey," following the Greek hero on his journey around the Mediterranean to discover why this tale continues to resonate with Western readers.

One Man's Odyssey Through The Odyssey

No Man's Lands

Fatoş Gaye Atay

Odysseus'un izinde

Hiçkimse'nin ülkeleri

What is this madness all about? Being a Browns fan is just different. Why are we the only fans in the nation who ever demanded their team back -- and got it? Why have we endured years of heartache (The Fumble, The Drive, "Red Right 88"...) yet grown ever more attached to the experience? To answer that question, these 33 essays seek out the essential elements of being a Browns fan. It's about pride. It's about desire, tempered by crushing disappointment. It's about tradition, rivalry, and electrifying victory. It's about longing -- for a return to past championships, for future glory. It's about heart. If you're Brown, you'll enjoy the ride.

What it Means to be a Cleveland Browns Fan

On Being Brown

John Kessel

Margaret Maron

Kelly Starling Lyons

Elaine Neil Orr

Angela Davis-Gardner

G.D. Gearino

David Rigsbee

Bridgette A. Lacy

Andrea Weigl

27 VIEWS of RALEIGH: The City of Oaks in Prose & Poetry features the work of twenty-seven (plus two) Raleighites who create a literary montage of North Carolina's capital city in fiction, essays, and poetry. Novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and even a science fiction writer capture the city in a variety of genres—spanning neighborhoods, generations, cultural and racial experiences, historic eras—reflecting the social, historic, and creative fabric of Raleigh. As Wilton Barnhardt writes in the book's introduction, “We seem to have flourished not because we have solved all the problems of the New South, despite leading the way now and again, but because we the citizens of Raleigh decided to be erudite, cultured, enriched, and entertained . . ."

The City of Oaks in Prose & Poetry

27 Views of Raleigh

“Nature, rightly questioned, never lies.” —A Manual of Scientific Enquiry, Third Edition, 1859 Scott Huler was working as a copy editor for a small publisher when he stumbled across the Beaufort Wind Scale in his Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary. It was one of those moments of discovery that writers live for. Written centuries ago, its 110 words launched Huler on a remarkable journey over land and sea into a fascinating world of explorers, mariners, scientists, and writers. After falling in love with what he decided was “the best, clearest, and most vigorous piece of descriptive writing I had ever seen,” Huler went in search of Admiral Francis Beaufort himself: hydrographer to the British Admiralty, man of science, and author—Huler assumed—of the Beaufort Wind Scale. But what Huler discovered is that the scale that carries Beaufort’s name has a long and complex evolution, and to properly understand it he had to keep reaching farther back in history, into the lives and works of figures from Daniel Defoe and Charles Darwin to Captains Bligh, of the Bounty, and Cook, of the Endeavor. As hydrographer to the British Admiralty it was Beaufort’s job to track the information that ships relied on: where to lay anchor, descriptions of ports, information about fortification, religion, and trade. But what came to fascinate Huler most about Beaufort was his obsession for observing things and communicating to others what the world looked like. Huler’s research landed him in one of the most fascinating and rich periods of history, because all around the world in the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in a grand, expansive period, modern science was being invented every day. These scientific advancements encompassed not only vast leaps in understanding but also how scientific innovation was expressed and even organized, including such enduring developments as the scale Anders Celsius created to simplify how Gabriel Fahrenheit measured temperature; the French-designed metric system; and the Gregorian calendar adopted by France and Great Britain. To Huler, Beaufort came to embody that passion for scientific observation and categorization; indeed Beaufort became the great scientific networker of his time. It was he, for example, who was tapped to lead the search for a naturalist in the 1830s to accompany the crew of the Beagle; he recommended a young naturalist named Charles Darwin. Defining the Wind is a wonderfully readable, often humorous, and always rich story that is ultimately about how we observe the forces of nature and the world around us.

The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry

Describes how nineteenth-century British admiral Francis Beaufort, a hydrographer to the British Admiraltry, created the Beaufort Scale, a scientific classification that measures the strength of the wind, utilizing just 110 words to define thirteen gradations of wind. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

The Beaufort Scale, and how a Nineteenth-century Admiral Turned Science Into Poetry

Scott Huler

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