This post is part of a recurring series that highlights UC Press books of note that have been featured recently in the media. This post focuses on our recent title A Sea of Glass: Searching for the Blaschkas’ Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk.
The book received a mention in a recent New Scientist article about the Blaschka glass collection: ““If ever there was a time to compare the plentiful past with an ocean in jeopardy, that time would be now,” says author Drew Harvell, who was instrumental in bringing Cornell’s Blaschka collection out of storage and into the Corning Museum of Glass in New York state. “We hope to find out whether they are surviving in the sea as magnificently as they do in glass,” she says.”
A recent review in Library Journal said: “The author makes an eloquent plea for marine biodiversity conservation. VERDICT: General readers, as well as those who enjoyed J.E.N. Veron’s A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End and Richard Ellis’s The Empty Ocean, will appreciate this volume.”
Discover Magazine ran a profile of Drew Harvell, available online to magazine subscribers, as well as a beautiful slideshow of the Blaschka glass creatures.
The book was reviewed this week in Hakai Magazine. Julie Schwietert Collazo called the book “an SOS call for a change in human behavior.”
NPR’s Science Friday ran a piece on their blog about the Blaschka collection, mentioning the current exhibit at the Corning Museum of Glass as well as A Sea of Glass: “Today, the marine models are enduring examples of a successful union between science and art, and Harvell uses them as teaching aids at Cornell. For her, they’re a source of inspiration at a crucial time for ocean conservation. As she writes in A Sea of Glass, “My vision is that these masterpieces of glass art motivate wonder and appreciation for our ocean world.””
And to cap off the outstanding reception to A Sea of Glass, Eve M. Kahn mentioned the book in an article she wrote for the New York Times antiques column earlier this month.
