[ home / oceanography / literature ]

The Oceanographic Literature - Books

Books pertaining to oceanography and related areas will be listed and described here. This will include books both in and out of print and, given my proclivities, will probably lean heavily towards physical oceanography. I'm going to attempt to have a fairly complete list of all texts that have been important to the development of the field (well, at least those in English). I'll also include books about oceanography that aren't strictly textbooks if I happen to run across them and like them.

The following list contains the title of the book and the author as well as (eventually) some sort of description or review of the book. The titles are links to another list that contains other information about the book, e.g. the publisher, year of publication, ISBN number, etc. Most will also have the table of contents so you can get an idea of the scope of each book. The list below is a subset of a larger set of geoscience related books that you might want to also peruse.

By the way, if you want to contribute a review or suggest a book that's not here then please go right ahead and do so. You'll find an email address at the bottom of the page.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

General Circulation of the Ocean - H. D. I. Abarbanel and W. R. Young, eds.
The World Ocean: An Introduction to Oceanography - W. A. Anikouchine and R. W. Sternberg
Principles of Ocean Physics - J. R. Apel
An Introduction to Marine Ecology - R. S. K. Barnes and R. N. Hughes
Waves and Beaches: The Dynamics of the Ocean Surface - Willard Bascom
The Crest of the Wave: Adventures in Oceanography - Willard Bascom
The New World of the Oceans: Men and Oceanography - Daniel Behrman
Inverse Methods in Physical Oceanography - A. Bennett
Fundamentals of Ocean Acoustics - L. Brekhovskikh and Yu. Lysanov
Tracers in the Sea - W. S. Broecker and T.-H. Peng

C
The Ocean River - H. Chapin and F. G. W. Smith
The Tides: Pulse of the Earth - Edward P. Clancy
The Great and Wide Sea: An Introduction to Oceanography and Marine Biology - R. E. Coker
Circulation in the Coastal Ocean - G. T. Csanady

D
The Tides and Kindred Phenomena in the Solar System - G. H. Darwin
Seas, Maps, and Men: An Atlas-History of Man's Exploration of the Oceans - G. E. R. Deacon, ed.: The illustrations in this book, which range from woodcuts to full color pictures, make it worth more than the cost of admission (that is, if you can even find it as it's long out of print). It consists of five sections, the first of which describes some of the great explorers connected with the oceans, e.g. Pytheas, Magellan, Cook, Nansen, and the folks aboard the submarine Nautilus. The second part deals with aquatic life, from an overview of the various creatures in the sea to a brief history of marine biology. Next is a section on nautical archeaology, not explicitly called that since in 1962, when the book was first published, it didn't as yet exist as a separately noted discipline. The fourth section dives (pardon the deliberate pun) into what is now considered the province of the science of oceanography, describing the then new or newly accepted areas of geological oceanography, ocean circulation dynamics and nearshore wave dynamics, as well as the even-then-old study of the tides. Finally, a reference section with everything from cartoons explaining polar wander to early oceanographic instruments to tidal dynamics as well as synopses of major expeditions and a list of books about the sea is included. To belabor a point, the illustrations which liberally populate this book are marvelous and just beg to be somehow transferred to the electronic medium, especially the woodcuts.
Scientists and the Sea 1650-1900: A Study of Marine Science - M. Deacon
Ebb and Flow: The Tides of Earth, Air and Water - Albert Defant
Physical Oceanography, Vol. I - A. Defant
Physical Oceanography, Vol. II - A. Defant
Hydrodynamics of Oceans and Atmospheres - Carl Eckart
The Sea, Vol. 7: The Oceanic Lithosphere - C. Emiliani, ed.
The Deep and the Past - D. B. Ericson and G. Wollin
The Ever-Changing Sea - D. B. Ericson and G. Wollin

F
Encyclopedia of Oceanography - R. W. Fairbridge
The Thermohaline Finestructure of the Ocean - K. N. Federov
The Physical Nature and Structure of Ocean Fronts - K. N. Federov
Sound Transmission Through a Fluctuating Ocean - S. M. Flatte, et al.
Science of the Sea: An Elementary Handbook of Practical Oceanography for Travelers, Sailors, and Yachtsmen - G. Herbert Fowler and E. J. Allen, eds.: This volume was prepared by the Challenger Society to promote the study of oceanography. As the subtitle indicates, it was primarily intended as a guidebook for interested amateurs (or perhaps semi-professionals) who wished to make useful oceanographic observations. The individual chapters were written by experts in the subject areas covered. It reflects the state of the art as of the mid-1920s for collecting, organizing and recording data for observations of the atmosphere, the ocean, microscopic ocean plants and animals, the sea floor and the denizens thereof, equipment, fishes, and large marine mammals. Over 200 illustrations and a review of the pertinent literature at the time enhance the pleasures of browsing through this well-written and -produced (by Oxford University Press), if more than a little dated, book.
Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Geophysical Fluid Dynamics - S. Friedlander
The Gulf Stream - T. F. Gaskell: A biography of the Gulf Stream by Gaskell, a student of Sir Edward Bullard and head of the H.M.S. Challenger expedition starting in 1949. An interesting overview of the historical, geographical, cultural, political, meteorological and oceanographical aspects of the world's most studied western boundary current. The latter two facets are largely dealt with descriptively with very little in the way of dynamical explanations.
Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics - Adrian Gill
The Sea, Vol. 5: Marine Chemistry - E. D. Goldberg, ed.
The Sea, Vol. 6: Marine Modeling - E. D. Goldberg, ed.
The Theory of Rotating Fluids - H. P. Greenspan
The Waters of the Sea - P. Groen
The Great Deep: The Sea and Its Thresholds - James Hamilton-Paterson
Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology. Vol. 1: Ecology - J. W. Hedgpeth, ed.
The Face of the Deep - B. C. Heezen and C. D. Hollister
The Sea, Vol. 1: Physical Oceanography - M. N. Hill, ed.
The Sea, Vol. 2: The Composition of Sea-Water; Comparative and Descriptive Oceanography - M. N. Hill, ed.
The Sea, Vol. 3: The Earth Beneath the Sea; History - M. N. Hill, ed.
The Sea, Vol. 4: New Concepts in Seafloor Evolution, Part I: General Observations - M. N. Hill, ed.
The Sea, Vol. 4: New Concepts in Seafloor Evolution, Part II: Regional Observations; Concepts - M. N. Hill, ed.
The Nordic Seas - B. G. Hurdle, ed.
Exploring the Ocean World: A History of Oceanography - C. P. Idyll, ed.
Estuary and Coastline Hydrodynamics - Arthur T. Ippen, ed.
A Study of the Oceans - J. Johnstone
Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction and Climate Modelling - B. A. Kagan
Fundamentals of Ocean Dynamics - V. M. Kamenkovich: The English translation (by R. Radok) of a text originally published in the Soviet Union.
An Introduction to Oceanography - C. A. M. King
Oceanography for Geographers - C. A. M. King: This book is identical except for the title to King's Introduction to Oceanography.
Wind Waves: Their Generation and Propagation on the Ocean Surface - Blair Kinsman
Introduction to Physical Oceanography - J. Knauss
Beach Processes and Sedimentation - P. D. Komar
Dynamics and Modelling of Ocean Waves - G. J. Komen, et al.
Numerical Modeling of Ocean Dynamics - Z. Kowalik and T. S. Murty
Methods and Results of Physical Oceanography, Vol. I - W. Krauss
An Introduction to Hydrodynamics and Water Waves - Bernard Le Mehaute
Temperature-Salinity Analysis of World Ocean Water - O. Mamayev
Ocean Tides - G. Marchuk and B. Kagan
Dynamics of Ocean Tides - G. Marchuk and B. Kagan
Mathematical Modelling of Ocean Circulation - G. Marchuk and A. Sarkisyan
The Sea - H. A. Marmer
The Physical Geography of the Sea - M. F. Maury
Variability of the Oceans - A. S. Monin, V. M. Kamenkovich and V. G. Kort: The English translation (edit by John Lumley) of a text originally published in the Soviet Union in 1974.
Ocean Currents - G. Neumann
Principles of Physical Oceanography - G. Neumann and W. Pierson
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics - J. Pedlosky
El Nino, La Nina, and the Southern Oscillation - S. G. H. Philander
The Dynamics of the Upper Ocean - O. M. Philips
Introductory Dynamic Oceanography - Stephen Pond and George L. Pickard
Dynamical Oceanography - J. Proudman
Introduction to Marine Chemistry - J. P. Riley and R. Chester

S
The Edge of an Unfamiliar World: A History of Oceanography - Susan Schlee
Oceanography: The Past - M. Sears and D. Merriman, eds.
The Earth Beneath the Sea - Francis P. Shepard
The Circulation of the Abyss - Henry Stommel
The Gulf Stream - Henry Stommel
A View of the Sea - Henry Stommel
An Introduction to the Coriolis Force - Henry M. Stommel and Dennis W. Moore
The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology - H. U. Sverdrup, Martin W. Johnson and Richard H. Fleming
Descriptive Regional Oceanography - P. Tchernia
Regional Oceanography: An Introduction - M. Tomczak and J. S. Godfrey
Buoyancy Effects in Fluids - J. S. Turner
An Introduction to Physical Oceanography - William S. von Arx
Tides and the Pull of the Moon - Francis E. Wylie

[ home / oceanography / literature ]

Last checked or updated: Oct. 12, 1996

S. Baum
Dept. of Oceanography
Texas A&M University

baum@astra.tamu.edu