Thursday, September 09, 2010

Hurricanes

I didn't sleep well Tuesday night. The arm of Hurricane Hermine that soaked Central Texas woke me up several times. While nothing close to the destruction of coastal communities five years ago, the abundance of rain found me thinking about the power of hurricanes. I read Eric Larson's Isaac's Storm a couple of summers ago and was intrigued by the compelling narrative. Isaac's Storm depicts the destruction of Galveston in 1900. I had no idea that until that hurricane Galveston was second only to New York in wealth. Once I reached the library the next morning I discovered numerous works on hurricane history. The following titles discuss the scientific aspects of hurricanes as well as social and communal implications of a deluge.

Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm: a Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

Douglas Brinkley's The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Richard Murnane's Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future

Bryan Carlile's After Ike: Aerial Views from the No-Fly Zone

David Longshore's Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

2 comments:

tim snead said...

I read Isaac's Storm years ago and The Great Deluge and saw the authors speak at the Texas Book Festival. In fact, I blogged about it (see Nov. 3, 2006, Reflections on the Texas Book Festival (link to post doesn't work).

tim snead said...

Sorry--I didn't mean "I beat you to it, nyeah nyeah", I just mean I liked those books too.