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Summary: Great Reading While Waiting for a Storm
Review: For vacation reading, I took along Isaac's Storm. Returning to the Gulf Coast with that powerful story in mind, I could more fully appreciate the warnings and preparations for the impending tropical storm/hurricane churning in the Gulf. The book details the horrendous effect of the 1900 hurricane on Galveston.
The next time they forecast a hurricane, read this book during the 2 or 3 days it approaches the coast. The author sets the scene of the fledgling Weather Bureau, the promise of thriving Galveston, and the lives of the people enjoying their seaside city. Knowing that over 8,000 people lost their lives makes the build up to the hurricane even more ominous.
The descriptions grip you, the scientific details of weather fit into the story seamlessly, while scenes of the tremendous battering by wind, rain and sea are horrifying. Even more horrifying is the aftermath of the storm with aid slow in coming and the dazed residents who managed to survive overwhelmed by the needed clean up effort.
Who would have thought that weather reports could be so gripping.
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Summary: Make this book into a movie!
Review: This is an incredible historical novel from the 1900 era which I highly recommend. When are they going to make a movie about this terrible tragedy? It's the deadliest natural disaster to hit America. This book tells the story through the eyes of the meteorologist of the day. Wonderful research, a must have! AAA+++
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Summary: Nature and Hubris Collide
Review: On September 8, 1900, a storm roared into Galveston, Texas - a storm that still has the dubious honor of causing U.S. History's greatest loss of human life due to natural disaster. I had heard very little, if anything about this tragedy or the circumstances leading to the egregious death toll, until very near its centennial. According to interviews in relation to the release of this book, this was Erik Larson's experience as well. It was only in doing research on another matter that he stumbled across descriptions of the Great Galveston Storm of 1900, and being an irrepressible weather hound, he was instantly obsessed. This is his readers' good fortune. How the magnitude of this storm could have been so tragically misread is something that is still debated among meteorologists, but Mr. Larson shows quite clearly the confluence of human error, arrogance and politics that created an environment ripe for just such a catastrophe. Competing weather bureaus, the concern about causing "undue panic" only to have the storm be less severe than predicted (observers weren't even allowed to use the word "hurricane"), among other things, all added up to a situation that caused the deaths of between 6,000 and 10,000 people. Along with the individual stories taken from oral histories of the survivors, which left me torn between tears and anger, I got a thorough, yet concise history of how hurricane prediction grew from mere observation of storms as they happened, to understanding of conditions that were conducive to a storm's creation. It is history and science, quickly-paced and very interesting; knowledge imparted before I was even aware I was learning something. Very sneaky, that Larson. As much as I hate to use the phrase "reads like a novel," this book truly does. It is accurate without being dry, and moving without being exploitative. It sheds much needed light on Isaac Cline and his storm, and I'm glad that Erik Larson was distracted from his original research and led down the path to Galveston. Word of warning - some of the stories are necessarily speculative, given the amount of time that has passed, but Larson explains his reasons and the credibility of his choices in his extensive notes. Also, natives of Galveston and descendants of the survivors will likely take issue with the less than stellar portrayal of Isaac Cline. I suspect Larson's take on Cline's actions on September 8 is relatively close to the truth, but I don't think it will sit well with some.
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Summary: Would be a fantastic Steven Speilberg movie
Review: I haven't been so involved in a book in a long time. It was wonderful to read and it gave me a new interest in hurricanes. The author puts so much factual research in with the story telling. I could not put it down.
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Summary: Controversial fiction masquerading as non fiction must sell
Review: Need to sell a book or two? Take a local hero and trash him, because controversy sells! The book is filled with errors like the claim that the storm was a Category 5. Pure bunk! It is a recorded fact that the storm surge was 16 feet high. That's why the multi million dollar (1902 dollars) seawall was built 17 feet high. Anyone who knows anything about hurricanes knows that a category 5 storm has a surge in the 26 to 30 foot high range. Just ask the survivors of hurricane Camille in 1969, or the survivor (singular) of the Richleaux Apartments. Ask Dr. Neil Frank, former head of the National Hurricane Center. Mr. Larson chose not to. Why does the book state that Mrs. Cline was pregnant at the time of the storm, when there is no source to back it up? Why does the book show brothers arguing when there is no source to back it up? Why was this book written by a non-hurricane expert and published one year before the 100th anniversary of the storm? I was born and raised in Galveston, and I have seen the 1900 Storm archives at the Rosenberg Library in Galveston. My grandparents survived the storm, and the horrors of that night have been passed on in family stories. Please don't take the advice of someone who lived in Houston for a while and visited the beach once or twice. As fiction goes, I'm ok with the book. It is not a non-fiction title. Finally, I take great offense at the trashing of Isaac Cline by someone just out to make a buck. Mr. Cline did the best he could, with the tools available at the end of the 19th Century. Holding him to 21st Century satellite enhanced standards is unjust. I know the truth will survive Mr. Larson's book, but will Mr. Larson's book survive 22nd Century scrutiny? Recommended for those who like fiction.
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Summary: An exciting book full of historical facts
Review: I found this book exciting as well as informative. Since my husband and I have a boat on the east coast, hurricanes are always a concern, especially since "Fabian" is taking a course at this time up the coast and it is rated a "4" at the current time. You can bet after reading this book that I will never underestimate any storm.
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Summary: A review from a decendent of survivors of the 1900 Storm
Review: My mother was born on Galveston, so I grew up hearing about Galveston hurricanes. This included the 1900 storm. Larson's book is a superb historical account of the 1900 storm. I give "Isaac's Storm" very high marks for it's huge wealth of information. This is most significant considering the scope of the disaster and the limited amount of literature concerning it. On the other hand, Larson's account of the storm failed to convey to me the horror and sheer magnitude felt by those who survived. I recall hearing of the 1900 storm as a boy. I can remember still the raw and hollow feeling those tales left inside me, not unlike how the world felt after another horrible September tragedy, September 11th, 2001. The lack of emotion was as if Mr. Larson were writing one of Isaac's Cline's reports to Moore - rather dry and impersonal. For those interested in a little less history and more of the impact the storm had on the lives of Gavlestonians, I would recommend another book that I have read more than once about the 1900 storm. It is "A Weekend In September" by John Edward Weems and is available through Amazon.com. Of the two books, Larson's has greater depth of historical information. Weems' book conveys more of the personal tragedy. Weems' book also includes much about Isaac Cline, but is written from the perspective of a young Galvestonian school teacher.
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Summary: A fascinating read
Review: Even if you have no independent interest in weather or Galveston Texas, you're probably going to enjoy this book anyway. One caveat: the details of the death and devastation were upsetting...but necessary as it is part of history. As for one reviewer's charge that this book is disorganized, I highly disagree - it's not disorganized, but written in such a way as to play the elements of this storm brewing against the rise and education of the arrogant scientist. The author does go into an interesting history of how people over the ages have observed, discovered and tracked hurricanes. In fact, it's the non-straightforward non-history lecture style that makes the book so compelling. The author prefaces each chapter (even the ones with the background history of Isaac and the science of hurricanes) with an omnious day by day account of this tremendous storm's growth and progression. It made the book very suspenseful even though the outcome is history. Apparently some readers prefer history to be told in classroom lecture chronological style, not with stylistic and subtle narratives. What I was left with was a better understanding of the turn of the century's attitudes. If the men handling weather information at that time hadn't been so arrogant and politically-motivated, maybe many lives could have been saved. In the end that's what was so sad about this book. It's a great read.
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Summary: Disorganized, meretricious, and overreaching
Review: The story of the Galveston hurricane is riveting. This book isn't. It proceeds in fits and starts, backwards and forwards in time. It has plenty of irrelevant discussion about Columbus, butterflies in Africa, and other topics. It's full of speculation about what people "must have" been thinking and feeling. It leaves loose ends all over the place. (What, exactly, did people think "The Law of Storms" was? What happened to the Pensacola? What happened to the people in the lighthouse?) It makes questionable assumptions for "dramatic effect" (what makes him think the orphanage children would have survived if they hadn't been tied together?) It promises and doesn't deliver (the early chapters hint at a momentous separation between Joseph and Isaac, but what happened -- maybe, because his documentation seems almost nonexistent -- was at most a gradual alienation over several years, a not uncommon phenomenon among dissimilar siblings). It's repetitive (we're told in two different places about Isaac's claim that he saved 6,000 people; where was the editor?) In short, what this story needs is straightforward telling based on a solid framework, solid fact, and honesty with the material. What this book gives it is a bumpy meandering through a rocky field in a car with no shock absorbers.
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Summary: Masterpiece of Nonfiction
Review: Larson's nonfiction work of the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 is a thoroughly reseached, brillantly written account of one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history. It also is a small biography of the U.S. weather bureau agent whose job was to record and forecast the weather patterns for the city of Galveston as well as several of the city's residents and their experiences with the great storm. Truly engrossing and vividly scary, it reads like many great works of suspense and terror and at the same time surpasses them for the events in this book actually took place. Simply a great work of nonfiction.
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