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Summary: The title says it best.
Review: Isaac's Storm truly captures a moment in American history and reveals an intruiging insight into a man's life that shaped the future of a city, a state and to some degree a country. Beside the gripping descrpition of the hurricane itself, I found the politics and the human element equally interesting. My great grandmother survivied this storm in a bathtub on her second floor after drilling holes in the floor to keep the water from washing her house away. To hear Larson's accounts of those who didn't survive gives me a new perspective on this event. For anyone who lives in areas threatened by hurricanes, this is required reading.
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Summary: Captivating!
Review: Like other reviews above, I was a little bored at first. However, the storm is described so realistically that you feel like you are there. It is hard to stop thinking about what those people went through.
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Summary: American Hubris
Review: What an incredible story! The most incredibly deadly storm in history, and much of it could have been avoided if egos had been checked at the Door. Isaac Cline, head meteorologist of the Galveston, Texas Weather Bureau, believes he knows everything there is to know about weather, specifically Hurricanes. Then on Sep 8 1900, almost 100 years ago, the deadly storm ripped through Galveston! Galveston was, at the time, attempting to become the major port on the Gulf of Mexico, after Sep 8, 1900 it would be only a small one. As a professional weather forecaster, and one who has worked with Typhoons before, I know how incredibly difficult it is to forecast them, let alone tell someone where the storm will not go! Cline, perhaps the most arrogant person I've ever had the pleasure of reading about, had convinced everyone in Galveston that no hurricane could ever come into Galveston. He was wrong, so wrong that perhaps as many as 10,000 people died. This book is one which should be read, by all those interested in history, weather, and most especially, those who think that man has learned all he will ever know. We will never know everything about weather, or anything else.... A great book. Buy it. Read it, again and again.
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Summary: Hurrah! Captivating
Review: As someone not particularly interested in Texas, weather, or disasters, I expected this book to be boring. It was not. The book contains much interesting stuff about Cuban weather forecasters, the US bureacracy, Galveston, and the career of the protagonist. But at the heart is the eerie, malignant hurricane and the reaction of the residents of Galveston. If you want to know how your family might react in the face of death and destruction - read this book. The reaction of husbands to wives as the flood waters rose, the struggle for survival on a floating roof top, the stranded railroad travellers and hapless steamship crews - this book is filled with fascinating stories and vivid images. At times the hurricane has a dreamlike quality of sinister unreality. Although the book has a depressing theme, its interesting and positive enough that I plan to reread it. At last,a book that lives up to its rave reviews.
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Summary: An unbelievably engrossing read
Review: I finished reading this book late one night this summer while spending some time on the North Carolina coast, within earshot of the crashing waves of the Atlantic and while listening to the wind gently shake the house in which I was staying. It was all too easy to think about the fate of Galveston and Isaac Cline's family in 1900 while becoming engrossed in Larson's narrative. This book tells the story of perhaps the least known major disaster of the last 100 years, but does it in a way that is thoroughly easy to read and understand. I found myself truly caring about all of the subjects in the book, as Larson tells their story with sensitivity and realism. There is no hyperbole here--only a great tale told with style and grace. Many people will make comparisons between this book and the much more hyped The Perfect Storm. They are, in fact, two very different books, but I must confess that I find Isaac's Storm the better of the two. It is more engrossing, and the scientific background of the storm made more integral to the story. Larson, despite working with characters who lived and perished from the Earth one hundred years ago, makes his subjects come alive, and allows us to visualize the Galveston of 1900 as a very real place. It was easy to relate to the residents of that ill-fated city, whereas I never was able to place myself onboard the Andrea Gail in Sebastian Junger's story of men against the sea. Truly one of the best books I have ever read.
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Summary: Gripping, if speculative, read
Review: This is one of the most gripping nonfiction books I have read in years. Beautifully written, deeply researched, well paced and -- with the Sept. 8 100th anniversary of The Great Storm that nearly destroyed Galveston just a month away as I write this -- unusually timely. After I finished reading it, I passed my copy along for her to read. She became engrossed in it. So much so that within a few days after she finished it, we actually made a special weekend trip down to Galveston in part just to visit some of the sites mentioned in the book (which has a very useful map). A couple of minor caveats: • Despite the dramatic writing style, this is a historical work on the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. It's not a merely another borderline-morbid True Death Adventure subgenre book. It might not appeal to all fans of that sort of thing, though it probably will to many. • It does use "new journalism"-like methods to fill in around known facts. The author does explain his choices in extensive endnotes, but inevitably many of the book's scenes are speculative. This is particularly potentially touchy since Isaac Cline has been depicted for decades as an indisputable hero of the 1900 hurricane, while this book offers a much more mixed (and likely somewhat more accurate) portrait of him. All in all, though, highly recommended!
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Summary: An Eerie and Powerful description of a Natural Disaster
Review: Are there other folks out there who enjoy reading true accounts of someone else's misfortune, especially if that misfortunate involves a titanic, unstoppable force of nature? A few, really good examples of this true-life disaster genre that I've read over the years are: "The Earth Shook - The Sky Burned" (San Francisco Earthquake)"; "The Coming Plague" (newly emerging diseases); "Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals" (doomed on Lake Superior, etc.); "Rats, Lice, and History" (a biography of typhus); and "Isaac's Storm" (the Galveston hurricane of 1900). Erik Larson's book on the deadliest hurricane in history has two main focal points: the hurricane itself; and the human drama of Isaac Cline, the Galveston meteorologist who failed to predict the intensity of the storm. The book meanders through occasional dry stretches of Isaac's pre-storm biography, and through the history of the U.S. Weather Bureau (they were interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the storm), but once it focuses on the events of September 8, 1900 and beyond, I wasn't able to set "Isaac's Storm" down. Especially compelling are the eerie descriptions of what it's like to sail through the eye of a hurricane, and of course the narrative (from the viewpoints of several survivors) of what it was like to be in Galveston before, during, and after the storm. If you are afraid of storms or of water, you might not want to read this book because Erik Larson puts you right there when the storm debris is caving in the side of your house, or when the "tide suddenly rises fully four feet at one bound".
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Summary: Better than fiction...
Review: Surely one of the most amazing books I've read in awhile. Larson tells the story of the hurricane of 1900, which completely destroyed the city of Galveston, Texas. Intensely personal, the story is told from the point of view of the townspeople, but especially from that of Isaac Cline, a young forecaster working for the Weather Bureau in Galveston. This book paints a vivid picture of life at the turn of the 20th century, and of the state of weather forecasting 100 years ago. No satellites, no computers or high technology of any kind. Larson's storytelling technique is absorbing and his story is gut-wrenching.
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Summary: An article becomes a book
Review: The success of The Perfect Storm has spawned a whole new genre of fictional history....and this is a perfect example along with this year's The Story of the Whaleship Essex--interesting yarns, but not full-length books. In this case, the great Galveston hurricane appears have the makings of the perfect book, but not in this painfully etiolated telling. Isaac is not a compelling figure--his rigid and abstemious character elicits little if any sympathy. The run-up to the storm is interminable and while the storm itself is good, the book itself is not worth the effort.
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Summary: One of my favorite, and best written accounts of human fault
Review: The huge success of the story of the Titanic (movie) a couple of years ago was not just about the romance which was fictionalized, but also about the reoccurring human belief that with our increased discoveries in science, we cannot fail. People felt this way at the turn of the century, with the discoveries of antibiotics which would 'totally' eradicate infectious disease, with spaceflight and the Challenger, with AIDS, and now believe it or not, the building up of coastal communities along the eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast Seaboard. All of this in spite of the belief of scientists and insurers that with global warming and changes in weather patterns these areas are liable to be hit by frequent and large storms in the near future. This book was a perfect display of human fraility and their ability to fool themselves. Larson did his research; I know because I started doing research on the Internet after reading his book...and almost all of what he said happened. There are plenty of first hand accounts available on the Internet including the reports written by Issac and his brother to the Weather Bureau and the idiotic replies and newspaper announcements given out by the dummy in charge at that time. Yes, we can only speculate what was going through their minds at that time, but many journals and diaries were accessed, in which the participants put down their thoughts and beliefs after the big event. At that time it was more likely for people to record their heritage and keep journals because of lack of television and radios, and the need to pass things on to the next generation. I found this book and the writing to be almost flawless. Larson writes with a journalistic bent, and if readers go to read the accounts of the Johnstown Flood in Pa. they would find writing much the same. Some of it is spectacular, but this storm was spectacular, and the stupidity and arrogance involved even more so. It is an immensely readable and enjoyable book, and I would recommend that the book be given to both contractors and buyers of homes on the coastline prior to building! Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh
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