What I've Read: Isaac's Storm

Prepare yourselves for some book review overload. One of the pleasures of vacations is disconnecting from the computer and reading a book. In my case, three of them.

First up, Isaac's Storm. This could not have come at a more opportune moment for me to read. About halfway through the reading this book, Washington was hit by an earthquake and a hurricane in the span of four days. It was a pretty crazy week, and when they called it HurriQuake 2011, I was quite pleased.

But reading this book about the Galveston hurricane of 1900 took the pleasure right out of that, though, since this was a massively devastating storm that killed 6,000 men, women and children. It's primarily two stories woven together: the story of how, at the turn of the century, man thought it had conquered weather and could predict/avoid/defeat anything that came its way; and the story of one man's hubris and whose decisions may have saved or lost countless number of lives depending on your viewpoint.


The look into weather predicting and bravado that the world (not just the U.S.) had toward predicting severe weather and being wholly proven wrong is a recurring theme around the turn of the century (see here (sorry, I can't find my review) and here). The Galveston storm was no different, and it's stunning to see how little has changed in predictions and how a lot comes down to luck and good fortune. I loved the way Larson closed the book, telling how today people line up at the local Walmart to buy provisions to ride out an upcoming hurricane. And on the spot where this Walmart exists, in the book the physical location once house a children's hospital where 90 kids huddled together with nuns to ride out the storm because they were located on the highest point of ground in Galveston. Yep, they all died.

It's a great book and Larson is a writer whose work I have devoured. He has a new book out about the first U.S. Ambassador to Nazi Germany, and you can be guaranteed that I will be reading that one.