A Book of Waves

“Refreshing as sea spray, A Book of Waves guides us through a vertiginous churn of tsunamis, soundings, breakers, and buoys. This future classic in the ocean humanities and anthropology of science expertly models how to study the emergence of scientific phenomena—waves—through meticulous ethnographic attention to their many cultural figurations, conditions of objectivity, and the urgent political crosscurrents of coastal and climate precarity. Prepare to flip your perspective, again and again.” - Melody Jue, author of Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater

“However you are grounded—in discipline, in environment, in theory—this book will move you.” - Nicole Starosielski, author of Media Hot and Cold

“Stefan Helmreich again shows why he is widely regarded as one of the most consistently innovative, erudite, and challenging anthropologists at work today. A Book of Waves is a model of expansive transdisciplinary practice, deeply grounded in anthropological theory and methods yet gliding frictionlessly across sites, concepts, and received boundaries. The book is a constant surprise, a mind-opening recalibration of the ways we assemble nature, science, ethnography, and the arts.” - Hugh Raffles, author of The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time

"An interesting overview of how natural ocean waves permeate society in many, often unrecognized ways from the standpoint of scientists who study them. This book encompasses historical and scientific perspectives on, sociological and anthropological insights into, and engineering and military challenges of humans’ connections with waves. The ethnographic approach blends scientific knowledge with insights from scientists studying waves. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." - N. W. Hinman, Choice

"A Book of Waves promises to be of interest to a diverse set of scholars. Most immediately, the book will be useful for scholars teaching or researching topics in the history and anthropology of physical sciences, the history of science and its relationship to American and other empire, colonialism and postcolonialism, and their reckoning with histories of militarism in the Pacific and elsewhere. As it plays with the form of a monograph, the book will be interesting for those hoping to similarly experiment with the form of nonfiction narrative. . . . Thinking and building a livable world that reconciles history and science’s imbrication in it, with hopes for more just futures, is hard work that tacitly demands much from the already overburdened, but  A Book of Waves is an exemplary case of how scholarship can help us to get to where we’re going." - Jonathan Galka, H-Environment

"A thorough reading of waves and how they 'convolve' ocean scientists’ subjectivities, markets, and planetary crises. . . . Beautifully designed and typeset, it situates itself somewhere between science and technology studies, infrastructure studies, and new materialism, introducing us to a mode of thinking and writing that deals with scientific concepts and material forces that 'rescript worlds and futures' (304)." - Lukas Ley, Anthropology Book Forum

"Helmreich pushes the boundaries of ethnographic wit and writing, illuminating the waves of wave science—its technoscientific histories, its modes of making knowledge, its ripples into mainstream culture—to rescript how we do and write ethnography in times of turbulent motion." - Lasse Bech, Ethnos

"A Book of Waves is a vast collection of surprising stories that waves tell. . . . It offers contributions to the burgeoning studies of oceans, seas, and waters in anthropology and other fields. It also offers an important model for anthropologists tackling environmental issues and the variegated stories inscribed within them." - Ignacio Farías, American Ethnologist

"Anyone interested in wordplay will find the book stimulating. Those interested in the interaction of scientific knowledge, how it is obtained, and how it is used and misused in coping with the joint promise and threat of near-shore waves will find much to ponder." - Carl Wunsch, IEEE Technology and Science Magazine

“A Book of Waves is many things at once: an inspired ethnography of wave scientists; a cultural history of waves; a foraging through wave figures beyond ocean water; an innovative commentary on social and ecological crises; and an inspiring source of unorthodox terminology and sideways thinking. It is essential reading for science and technology, ‘blue’ humanities, media studies, and maritime anthropology enthusiasts, both researchers and advanced students.” - Franz Krause, Anthropos

"Stephan Helmreich skillfully employs various interpretations of waves—encompassing natural, cultural, and temporal dimensions—to deepen readers’ understanding of human nature, viewed through the lens of anthropology extending beyond humans." - Nemer E. Narchi, Environment and Society

"As much a work of art as it is anthropology, this book provides important contributions to the history of ocean science and more broadly to the 'Blue Humanities.'" - Christopher L. Pastore, Isis

"An engrossing and immersive read. . . . A Book of Waves will no doubt be a must-read for anthropologists and other scholars interested in oceans, science and technology, and climate change." - Maximilian Viatori, Journal of Anthropological Research