Fluvial analogies

In a chapter Michael has written on his hero, Ralph Bagnold, for a multi-author book on macro-engineering, he quotes the goal statement that Bagnold and his collaborator Luna Leopold came up with in the 1950s for their work in the slow-moving field of sediment transport. They declared that together they would ‘‘stir the pool of complacent tradition with the stick of reality.’’

Michael's peerless copy editor at the University of California Press, Dore Brown, used a similar metaphor to describe her absolutely critical work on the text of Sand. She was trying "not to still the occasional meanderings, but simply to free up the larger eddies that threatened to impede forward motion."