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Summary: Well written and informative
Review: This book will draw you in and keep you interested. I planned on reading a couple of chapters and would up reading the entire book in one sitting. A little gory at times (only when necessary to describe the scene) and fascinating at all times!
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Summary: The Law of Storms
Review: I thought this was a very interesting and well-written book. For my own tastes, I would have preferred a little less about the office politics of the U.S. Weather Bureau and more about the mighty hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas in 1900. The book doesn't really take off until the monster makes landfall, and then the story gathers speed and interest very quickly. The author, Erik Larson, has a good eye for detail and a good clean way of writing about terribly moving a tragic moments: a child's rocking horse washed up along inland railroad tracks, corpse pyres in the aftermath creating illumination along the beach like "suns about to rise", and many other moments like these flash throughout the second half of the book. The Galveston Hurricane was a watershed for the advancement of hurricane prediction, as it became an urgent matter to avoid the horrific death tolls such as this storm produced. One aspect of this book is a depiction of the U.S. Weather Bureau during the storm, and it is not a complimentary portrait. It is the author's view that the huge death tolls of this storm might have been avoided if the U.S. Weather Bureau had been willing to listen to the Cuban forecasters, which had predicted the advance of a large hurricane; that in fact, the US Bureau was stubborn and dismissive of the Cuban meteorologists. Yet, as the author writes, the Cubans seemed to call every puff of wind that crossed their island a "hurricane," so how could you take them seriously? I feel the author's need to find fault with the U.S. Bureau for the high death toll is simply an example of the very current need to place the blame, from the comfort of 20/20 hindsight, of every bad event on somebody. After reading this book, it seems to me that no one, anywhere, had the technology in 1900 to predict or track hurricanes effectively, and the Cuban Bureau, by calling every storm a hurricane, got this one right (as they were bound to eventually). Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it.
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Summary: Excellent read!
Review: I have been facinated by hurricanes since I was a kid and experienced Hurricane Agnes in 1972, which by the time it reached this area, was only a tropical storm, and still did major damage. I loved this book. The author gives such a vivid description of what is is like to be a mere human being at the mercy of such a powerful storm. I think this book should be required reading for middle school or high school students studying weather; it has all the elements of science and human drama.
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Summary: Dead Men Tell No Tales...
Review: so, legitimate historians, psychologizers, fiction writers and sensationalizers get to do it for them. Many other reviewers of this book have pointed out what an exciting read this books is, and of that there is no doubt. However, as a BOI (born-on-the island, as native Galvestonians are called), and as one who has made a hobby of studying the history of the Great Storm, Erik Larson's book is an alarming addition to the literature. That pig-headed bureaucrats in that day's weather bureau doomed much of the island's population is indisputable (nothing could have saved the island's structures from destruction). However, making Isaac Cline bear the burden of the storm's tragedy is scapegoating of the worst kind. Larson's setting up of Cline in the Introductory chapter of the book makes it clear that he is to be Larson's villan. None of Cline's noble, nearly heroic actions before, during, and immediately after, the storm can dissuade Larson from pillorying Cline. He has his antagonist, and is satisfied with him. In fact, at the end of the book, Larson admits that Cline was basically filled in by "detective work and deduction" using sources that provided only the barest of information about Cline's biographical facts. It is, in other words, a hatchet job. Should you read this book? If you are able to tell judiciously told history from historical fiction-sure! And, have a good time with a rollicking story. If you want an idea of what the true circumstances are around the storm, read Weems' *A Weekend in September,* or the section on the storm in Cartwright's or McComb's histories of the city. My fear is that other writers on the storm will note the popularity of this work, and write these distortions into the historical record of the city.
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Summary: LITTLE DECISIONS
Review: Erik Larson's research on the 1900 Galveston cyclone discovers many of the little decisions that led to catastrophe. A father stubbornly stays at home to weather the hurricane. Train passengers decide to remain with the train as the waters deepen. A man plans to rip off a door and float away if the storm forces him to escape. Another pushes his brood into an overturned roof as it passes by their home in the surging water. Some of these people lived. Some died. But the biggest little decision was made the day before and it preciptated the disaster. No hurricane warnings were given. The result? Six thousand dead. Larson proves that disasters can be avoided, but not if those in charge allow petty disputes and arrogance to influence their decisions.
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Summary: Petty Bureaucrats in the Gilded Age
Review: Great book,reads like a novel...the storm is,by far, one of the most interesting and compelling characters, from its humble beginning as a warm breeze on the edge of the African deserts, to its transformation into one of the most devastating hurricanes to ever strike the Texas coast. In their pigheaded jockeying for positions in the newly formed National Weather Service, the petty bureaucrats blew this one out of their collective wazoos. Their refusal to listen to, indeed, even squashing the advice from Cuban forecasters,who had been observing storms for a few hundred years, cost thousands of lives.This should be MUST reading for anyone living on the U.S.coast.
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Summary: A gripping tale that can't be put down
Review: Not being a non-fiction reader for several years, this book peaked my interest since I live near Galveston. What I wasn't ready for was the draw this book had. I couldn't put this book down once I began reading it. The story is written in a fictional style but is pure non-fiction. It will hook you from the first page and carry you across the century. Perhaps, if you reflect upon the circumstances of those caught off guard by this storm you will see, as I did, the arrogance of those who lived at the turn of the century (1900) and how closely we come today to repeating that mind-set. We feel invunerable and yet nature has proven time and again what a tricky adversary she is. Least we think ourselves above nature we are sure to see that in the heart of disaster we are, as always, vunerable beings. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: WELL WRITTEN
Review: The book was well written and followed a good chronological timeline. His depiction of the events leading to the storm, and his description of the state-of-the-art weather technology at the turn of the last century are clear. The harrowing escapes and flooding are dramatic, and the cleanup was heart-wrenching. A tale well told.
Rating: 
Summary: Questionable Research?
Review: While I found "Isaacs Storm" to be an entertaining read, the prose is often purplish. I did find one error in scholarship that caused me to question the veracity of the whole screed. On page 58 of the paperback edition, the author places Judge Roy Bean in Sweetwater, Texas (located in North Central Texas.) Every Texan knows that Judge Roy Bean was located in Langtry, Texas, down on the Rio Grande. To confirm, I telephoned the local historical center in Sweetwater, and they are blissfully unaware of the fact that Judge Roy Bean ever practiced jurisprudence there. I find Judge Roy Bean's astral projection of some hundreds of miles a far greater mystery than the fact that turn of the century weather forecaster might misdiagnose a hurricane.
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Summary: Read like an adventure story.
Review: Wow! Impressive. I started the first page and before I realized it I was at the last page! In one sitting minus the time it took to take my Great Dane Tempo out to do his "business." Although Larson is not an academic historian, he is a thorough journalist with articles in several publications, including Time, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and The Wall Street Journal, and several books to his credit. His research of the topic is extensive, as witnessed by the bibliography, and his writing style is riveting. Isaac's Storm describes an intriguing, almost mythic time in history, the turn of the 20th Century. This was a time of expansion, a time when it seemed that western man, having colonialized most of the known world and traveled to the most inaccessible portions of the globe, would be able to conquer nature itself. It was nothing if not an exuberant and naive time, an adolescence full of questions. Darwin had questioned the tenets of faith and divine creation, Shaw the social and sexual hierarchy, Ibsen the values of the middle class, Marx the validity of capitalism. Cline and his fellows were busy questioning the basis of cimate and weather. It was a time of new inventions, a gadget age which witnessed the introduction of the telegraph, the telephone, and the automobile. The Titanic, World War I,the disillusionment of the Jazz Age, and the Great Depression were still in the offing, just beyond the horizon, but in September of 1900 nothing yet seemed impossible. Isaac Cline was a man of the times. He was a workaholic and polymath of considerable talent, having graduated from a local Tennessee college and a training program in meteorology conducted by the military in behalf of it's nascent Weather Bureau. He went on to get a medical degree and research the effects of climate on health while fulfilling his obligations as a meteorologist for the government. Later in life he studied art and became an artist, art connoisseur and dealer. It was evident by his thoroughness that he was proud of his work and shared the fundamental beliefs of his class and time. While Cline is an interesting individual and the thread that binds the story together, the real personality of Larson's book is the hurricane itself; the book is really the biography of a storm. The Galveston hurricane of September 1900 was of mythic proportions, an almost Armageddon event, and Larson tells its tale well. It has a "family tree," of sorts, beginning with experiences with Carribean hurricanes by men like Columbus and his arch enemy Don Jose Solano, and by those of amateur meteorologists in Cuba, and with the cyclones of the Bay of Bengal by European students of weather in India. It also has a "personal" history, and Larson follows it from its birth in Equatorial Africa to it's march through the Atlantic across Cuba and on to Galveston. Material as diverse as ships logs and the personal comments by captains and crews caught at sea by the storm add a sense of impending disaster to the description. The story of the Hurricane of 1900 is made very real to the reader through a narrative of the events from the perspective of survivors. Like tales of the Johnstown Flood, which had happened a few years earlier (and from whom the people of Galveston received relief aid after the storm) the stories of tragic loss and miraculous survival are moving. The characters of many the individuals are made vivid through information gleaned in diaries, letters, government documents, newspapers, and personal reminiscences. The reader is captured in the details of the daily life of the city and its in habitants in such a way that the outcome of the storm is not a matter of idyl curiosity but one of personal urgency. I found myself so taken by the story of one family, that when a woman was found dead, I had to make certain by reading back again, that she was not a member of "my" family. I felt relief in knowing she was not, but a sense of anxiety too, in not knowing the outcome of their tale. How many survivors of the 1900 debacle must have felt that same lack of closure even more intensely than I! The book reads like an adventure story!
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