It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.

Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume.

Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.

Cynthia Barnett is a long-time journalist who has reported on freshwater from the Suwannee River to Singapore. Her new book, "Rain: A Natural and Cultural History," will be published in April 2015. Ms. Barnett's first book, "Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S." won the gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards and was named by The Tampa Bay Times as one of the top 10 books that every Floridian should read. Her "Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis" was named by The Boston Globe as one of the top 10 science books of 2011.

The Globe describes Ms. Barnett's author persona as "part journalist, part mom, part historian, and part optimist." The Los Angeles Times writes that she "takes us back to the origins of our water in much the same way, with much the same vividness and compassion as Michael Pollan led us from our kitchens to potato fields and feed lots of modern agribusiness."

Ms. Barnett has worked for newspapers and magazines for 25 years. Her numerous journalism awards include a national Sigma Delta Chi prize for investigative magazine reporting and eight Green Eyeshades, which recognize outstanding journalism in 11 southeastern states. She earned her bachelor's degree in journalism and master's in environmental history, both from the University of Florida, and spent a year as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan. She lives with her family in Gainesville, Florida.

For more information, please visit the author's website at www.cynthiabarnett.net.