Isaac's Storm : : a Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / United States / 20th Century / Larson, Erik
On Shelf At: Malletts Creek Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / United States / 20th Century / Larson, Erik	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / United States / 20th Century / Larson, Erik	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Based on the diaries of Isaac Monroe Cline and on contemporary accounts.
Beach: September 8, 1900 -- ch. 1. Law of storms -- ch. 2. Serpent's coil -- ch. 3. Spectacle -- ch. 4. Cataclysm -- ch. 5. Strange news -- ch. 6. Haunted.
Narrated by Richard M. Davidson.
Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based was to him preposterous. It is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets nature's last uncontrollable force, based on Cline's own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows and whys of great storms.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

fascinating submitted by sumsaylor on July 15, 2015, 8:12pm Erik Larson has the ability to take historical events and weave together yarns that in the end feel like you're reading a page-turning novel. This book just raced along full of facts and interesting detail about "a man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history." This book is a dramatic reminder that it wasn’t very long ago that we couldn’t come close to predicting the weather.

History of a Forgotten Disaster submitted by Meginator on July 11, 2021, 12:19pm I normally admire Erik Larson’s ability to weave together intimate personal stories with broader historical trends to illuminate historical events, but this book misses the mark. He never fully connects Isaac Cline’s personal story to the general trend of Golden Age hubris that led to the U.S. Weather Bureau’s complete and catastrophic failure to accurately forecast the danger and prepare Galveston’s residents for disaster, although he does illuminate aspects of the Bureau’s history that made this disaster as deadly and destructive as it was. He also has the annoying tendency to refer, repeatedly, to a falling-out between Cline and his brother that is unexplained by the men’s memoirs, leading to a lot of narrative tension without any meaningful payoff. Still, the book is a fairly accessible and interesting account of a largely forgotten but massively catastrophic event in U.S. history, even if Larson ultimately doesn’t combine its disparate elements together in a convincing way.