"The clouds are nature's poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays," notes the author of The Wave Watcher's Companion here, "since everyone has an equally fantastic view of them." Introducing the different types of clouds and explaining how they affect the weather, Gavin Pretor-Pinney also shares reams of trivia and lore, telling why ancient Hindus believed the cumulus clouds were the spiritual cousins of elephants, explaining how thermal air currents act on fair weather cumuli, recounting what happened when a man fell through a cloud, and predicting who would win if a cumulonimbus storm cloud battled a drizzly nimbostratus.