Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding
Review: I would have to disagree with two of the reviews written and say that I think this book is very well reserched. I have personaly been interested in the storm of 1938 for many years and have done quite a bit of reserch on it myself. I found Ms.Scotti to be a very well informed writer and I think that she weaves the information and the personal stories together beautifuly. Infact the combination was so enthralling that I stayed up all night to finish it. I highly recomend it, not only for people interested in storms, but for anyone looking for a moving and wonderful book to curl up with on these chilly nights. I have been waiting for a book about the storm for some time and could not have asked for a better one then this.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptionally well written account of a horrifying disaster
Review: Like the author R.A. Scotti, I am a native Rhode Islander who grew up hearing stories of the great Hurricane of 1938. Take just one look at the photograph on the cover of "Sudden Sea" and you will immediately appreciate the terror that overtook people on that steamy September afternoon. In Rhode Island, it had been a mostly sunny but hot day. All of the sudden the sky turned an ominous yellow. And within a very short time driving rains and winds of well over 100 MPH were pounding the area. And no one, not one single person, had any idea it was coming!
Having read a number of books on disasters, I have found that most disasters are usually a convergence of any number of unfortunate circumstances. And so it was on Long Island and throughout much of New England on that fateful day. While there was some limited ability to forecast hurricanes in those days, no one was prepared for, nor could they have predicted the path, the speed or the destructive potential of this monster storm. The simple fact of the matter is that even in this day and age with all of our sophisticated equipment, experts agree that they cannot forecast the behavior of a hurricane more than 24 hours in advance.
R.A. Scotti introduces the reader to a number of families who found themselves suddenly caught up in the Hurricane of 1938. They are a pretty diverse bunch, ranging from well-heeled old money clans on the Hamptons to working class stiffs who owned small cottages on the Rhode Island coast. Some of her subjects would not make it through that afternoon. And for those lucky enough to survive life would never be the same. For instance, in one area in Charlestown RI on the southern RI coast there were 700 summer homes at 3:00 that afternoon. By the time the storm moved away around sunset there was absolutely nothing left! And this was not a unique scenario by any means. It was repeated over and over again throughout southern New England. The storm would claim over 700 people and injure 2000 more. The hurricane cost more than $4.7 billon (with a "b") in todays dollars. This hurricane was so powerful and fast moving that hurricane winds were felt as far north as Burlington, Vermont.
I do a great deal of reading about history, politics and current events. I would have to say that this is the best written book I have read this year. R.A. Scotti is a real wordsmith and I really appreciated her abilty to turn a phrase. I could not put this one down. Very highly recommended!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing book
Review: Living in New York, one has often heard that if the Great Hurricane of 1938 was to strike today, it could wipe off the map areas that are now heavily populated, but were fairly barren in 1938. Like Long Island. I was hoping this book would deal with science, history, and the future. Instead, while heavily footnoted, sourced, and researched, the result of all this research is a bunch of strung-together touch-feely anecdotes, seemingly intended to wring tears out of sentimental readers. Compelling as the anecdotes may be, the book does not ask or answer the right questions. How many died? Where? Why? Most importantly, what would happen if a similar hurricane struck again, in the same place, which seldom experiences such hurricanes? What has been learned from then to now? One can contrast "Sudden Sea" with another hurricane book--"Isaac's Storm", by Erik Larson, which dealt with the far deadlier Galveston hurricane of 1900. Here, science, the past, and the future were dealt with in a far more sophisticated analysis. "Sudden Sea" is a sob story. Maybe the author is looking for movie rights(?) Who can say... But if one is looking for the definitive work on the Hurricane of 1938, one will have to wait a bit longer.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Perfect Storm
Review: Not unlike the best seller A PERFECT STORM, this description of a runaway hurricane is different because of the time - 1938. Without radar, weather balloons or satellite pictures, the fledgling U. S. Weather Bureau was caught almost totally unaware when the 180 miles per hour winds, rain and sea surge skipped Florida, teased the Carolina coasts, ruffled the edges of New York and then slammed into southern New England. My personal experience is hearing my parents talk about it years later (I was only one) "And the pear tree went right over!"
SUDDEN SEA abounds with personal interviews, eye witness accounts, mountains of research in newspapers, magazines and archival records. Author R. A. Scotti conveys a good sense of the Great Depression, pre-technology 1938 world, draws on the emotional experiences of individuals, and keeps a suspense going at the same time. Although you have to wait to the last few pages to find out what happens to the kids on the school bus, in the meantime you learn about meteorology, the hurricane process, and what Katherine Hepburn was doing at the time (would you believe golf?).
Nicely narrated. I'm sending it to my mother.
Rating:
Summary: "A strange ochre light came off the ocean..."
Review: Powerful hurricanes are infrequent visitors to New England, but 'The Long Island Express' not only paid a visit---it dropped in unannounced on September 21, 1938 just as many summer residents were on the beach and closing up their ocean-front cottages, among them actress Katharine Hepburn and her mother.
The Weather Bureau gave no cause for alarm, at least not after the hurricane skirted Florida and headed north. The meteorologists in Washington D.C. assumed that the storm would dissipate in the cold waters of the Atlantic, as had happened to all north-bound hurricanes since the Great September Gale devastated New England in 1815. According to the author, no one could have been prepared for the 1938 storm's speed and ferocity. Sweeping northward from Cape Hatteras, building tremendous momentum as it advanced, the hurricane raced over six hundred miles in only twelve hours. Only the captain of the 'Carinthia,' a small 20,000 ton luxury cruiser that weathered the ferocious brawl 150 miles north of Florida might have given warning. He did radio to shore that his barometer had dropped "almost an inch to 27.85 in less than an hour. It was one of the lowest readings ever recorded in the North Atlantic." Author Scotti interviewed many survivors of this ferocious storm, and includes the story of Katharine Hepburn who had to escape her seaside house through a dining room window and then battle her way to higher ground: "When the Hepburns reached high ground, they looked back. [Their house] which had endured tide and wind since the 1870's, pirouetted slowly and sailed away." Many folks were not as fortunate as the Hepburns. The storm surge was so sudden and so high many houses were completely inundated before their inhabitants could escape. One survivor saw a submerged house leap twenty-five feet into the air and explode. Another watched as a school bus containing his children was overtaken by the onrushing water. Others climbed to the top floors of their homes, then clung desperately to pieces of their roof as their houses washed away beneath them. It is estimated that 682 people died and another 1,754 were seriously wounded by the 'Long Island Express.' Scotti focuses on a few representative stories, and relates tantalizing fragments of many others. If you would like to read a first-hand account of the 'Long Island Express,' September 21, 1938 was also the day that Everett S. Allen, recent college graduate and future author of "A Wind to Shake the World," began his first 'real' job as a reporter for the New Bedford 'Standard Times.' His book is one of the finest accounts of this vastly underreported hurricane.
Rating:
Summary: A disappoinment
Review: R. A. Scotti blatently rips off her predecessors' accounts of the 1938 Hurricane, particularly Everett Allen's. She is writing for the obese Oprah's Book Club-following 40-something American woman who likes Crystal Light, Julia Roberts, and People magazine. No analysis in Sudden Storm is original; nearly everything Scotti introduces can be found in an earlier work. To the uneducated reader Scotti tells a wonderful and exciting tale, but to anyone who's familiar with the history beind the 1938 Hurricane, Sudden Storm is a pathetic attempt to cash in on the trend of thick New England middle-aged women's sad hobby of glazing over history and then swallowing the commercial output (Sudden Storm) like they would a hot Krispy Kreme.
Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Read
Review: Scotti's book puts you square in the middle of the turbulence that was the hurricane of 1938. It's a compelling human drama, told with wit, pathos and a glimpse of what might be around the corner
!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting book on well-known and published hurricane
Review: The beginning of the book hooked me...but somewhere mid-stream it became a hard read...it took about 6 sittings to read the 240ish page book. Meteorology was barely touched upon, which is fine, considering the Weather Bureau was only taking surface observations at the time and any other deductions would be mere guess-work. Besides, non-mets usually make all kinds of errors, such as assuming the Saffir-Simpson Scale was in use (I don't even think the term "Great Hurricane" had been coined as of that time.) One of the forecasters involved actually became one of the best-skilled hurricane forecasters around...it would have been nice if she expounded on his later career, but no matter. It seemed like the author tried too hard to weave the individual stories together, and I got lost when going back and forth from different spots in Rhode Island and Long Island. I felt like I was adrift in the storm myself. I did like how she followed up on the characters who survived...that was a nice touch. If you're interested in southern New England and weather, this should be a good buy.
Rating:
Summary: The Terrific Tale Almost Tells Itself
Review: The Great Hurricane of 1938 was a wonderful choice for author R.A. Scotti to have selected as it would be hard not to have a successful tale to tell with a story of such inherent drama. The author does an admirable job in Sudden Sea of letting the story tell itself without getting too much in the way. The few small lapses (the thinly set context for this time and place is perhaps one misstep) are quickly erased as the hurricane barrels its way up the coast. The author wisely selects her scenes and the reader is captured by the tension of the life-and-death struggles of the survivors judiciously highlighted. This book is a little in the shadows next to a classic like Isaac's Storm but it still provides a great, late night of nail-biting (and very often quite moving) reading.
Rating:
Summary: details not quite right
Review: This book is very readable, interesting and engaging. The story is gripping, however the author takes liberties with some of the details and stretches others - for example, one person mentioned in the story supposedly explored out West when it was the wild west, yet when his age is given, he would not yet have been born when the west was still wild! I suppose you could call it literary licence but some of these details just don't add up. Was this hurricane really the only category 5 to hit the US? What about the Galveston Hurricane in 1900? This is disappointing and confusing to me, but the subject matter is enough to carry the book.
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