The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages

Pinney, a College of London anthropologist and art historian, examines the phenomenon of mirages in this highbrow meditation. Pinney explains that mirages are the result of light bending as it passes through air of different temperatures and therefore different densities. He is most interested in superior mirages (those that appear above the viewer’s level of vision), specifically fata morgana, often spectacular optical effects that create images of complex forms—cityscapes, the famous Flying Dutchman, even faces—directly above the horizon. He examines mirages as cause of frustration and disappointment, as religious metaphor for falsehood or a society on the brink, and as depiction of mythological places (as in ancient Japan, where mirages were believed to be images of the legendary island of Horai and to originate in the exhalations of enormous clam-monsters). Pinney’s writing is characterized by his erudition—a single paragraph might move from Edmund Burke and Liebniz to a digression on the etymology of “baroque”—though his exceptional vocabulary will require many readers to keep a dictionary by their sides, and he’s capable of abstractions that obscure rather than enlighten. But readers curious about the natural world will find this rumination of interest. Illus. (June)