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Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History Paperback – July 11, 2000
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“A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and all the more compelling for being true.” —The New York Times Book Review
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people—and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.
Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude.
- Print length323 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateJuly 11, 2000
- Dimensions5.16 x 0.74 x 7.93 inches
- ISBN-109780375708275
- ISBN-13978-0375708275
- Lexile measure1020L
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What's it about?
The Galveston hurricane of 1900, still the deadliest natural disaster in American history, is recounted in this gripping account by the acclaimed author of The Devil in the White City.Popular highlight
Hippocrates, who believed climate determined the character of men and nations.1,145 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Waves form by absorbing energy from the wind. The longer the “fetch,” or the expanse of sea over which the wind can blow without obstruction, the taller a wave gets. The taller it gets, the more efficiently it absorbs additional energy. Generally, its maximum height will equal half the speed of the wind. Thus a wind of 150 miles an hour can produce waves up to 75 feet tall.981 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
In 1979 a tropical storm named Claudette blew off the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston and deluged the town of Alvin, Texas, with forty-two inches of rain in twenty-four hours, still the U.S. record for sheer intensity.718 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
“Time lost can never be recovered,” he said, “and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.”709 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
The storm caused such thorough destruction, and killed so many residents, the survivors abandoned the town forever.620 Kindle readers highlighted this
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Gripping ... the Jaws of hurricane yarns.” —The Washington Post
"The best storm book I've read, consumed mostly in twenty-four hours; these pages filled me with dread. Days later, I am still glancing out the window nervously. A well-told story." —Daniel Hays, author of My Old Man and the Sea
"Isaac's Storm so fully swept me away into another place, another time that I didn't want it to end. I braced myself from the monstrous winds, recoiled in shock at the sight of flailing children floating by, and shook my head at the hubris of our scientists who were so convinced that they had the weather all figured out. Erik Larson's writing is luminous, the story absolutely gripping. If there is one book to read as we enter a new millennium, it's Isaac's Storm, a tale that reminds us that there are forces at work out there well beyond our control, and maybe even well beyond our understanding." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of The Other Side of the River and There Are No Children Here
"There is electricity in these pages, from the crackling wit and intelligence of the prose to the thrillingly described terrors of natural mayhem and unprecedented destruction. Though brimming with the subtleties of human nature, the nuances of history, and the poetry of landscapes, Isaac's Storm still might best be described as a sheer page turner." —Melissa Faye Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing
"Superb…. Larson has made [Isaac] Cline, turn-of-the-century Galveston, and the Great Hurricane live again." —The Wall Street Journal
"Erik Laron's accomplishment is to have made this great-storm story a very human one —thanks to his use of the large number of survivors' accounts—without ignoring the hurricane itself." —The Boston Globe
"Vividly captures the devastation." —Newsday
"This brilliant exploration of the hurrican's deadly force...tracks the gathering storm as if it were a character…. Larson has the storyteller's gift of keeping the reader spellbound." —The Times-Picayune
"With consumate narrative skill and insight into turn-of-the-century American culture…. Larson's story is about the folly of all who believe that man can master or outwit the forces of nature." —The News & Observer
"A powerful story ... a classic tale of mankind versus nature." —The Christian Science Monitor
From the Inside Flap
Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.
From the Back Cover
Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Thrilling, powerful, and unrelentingly suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the uncontrollable force of nature.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Washington, D.C.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Manager, Western Union
Houston, Texas
Do you hear anything about Galveston?
Willis L. Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau
The Beach
September 8, 1900
Throughout the night of Friday, September 7, 1900, Isaac Monroe Cline found himself waking to a persistent sense of something gone wrong. It was the kind of feeling parents often experienced and one that no doubt had come to him when each of his three daughters was a baby. Each would cry, of course, and often for astounding lengths of time, tearing a seam not just through the Cline house but also, in that day of open windows and unlocked doors, through the dew-sequined peace of his entire neighborhood. On some nights, however, the children cried only long enough to wake him, and he would lie there heart-struck, wondering what had brought him back to the world at such an unaccustomed hour. Tonight that feeling returned.
Most other nights, Isaac slept soundly. He was a creature of the last turning of the centuries when sleep seemed to come more easily. Things were clear to him. He was loyal, a believer in dignity, honor, and effort. He taught Sunday school. He paid cash, a fact noted in a directory published by the Giles Mercantile Agency and meant to be held in strictest confidence. The small red book fit into a vest pocket and listed nearly all Galveston's established citizens--its police officers, bankers, waiters, clerics, tobacconists, undertakers, tycoons, and shipping agents--and rated them for credit-worthiness, basing this appraisal on secret reports filed anonymously by friends and enemies. An asterisk beside a name meant trouble, "Inquire at Office," and marred the fiscal reputations of such people as Joe Amando, tamale vendor; Noah Allen, attorney; Ida Cherry, widow; and August Rollfing, housepainter. Isaac Cline got the highest rating, a "B," for "Pays Well, Worthy of Credit." In November of 1893, two years after Isaac arrived in Galveston to open the Texas Section of the new U.S. Weather Bureau, a government inspector wrote: "I suppose there is not a man in the Service on Station Duty who does more real work than he. . . . He takes a remarkable degree of interest in his work, and has a great pride in making his station one of the best and most important in the country, as it is now."
Upon first meeting Isaac, men found him to be modest and self-effacing, but those who came to know him well saw a hardness and confidence that verged on conceit. A New Orleans photographer captured this aspect in a photograph that is so good, with so much attention to the geometries of composition and light, it could be a portrait in oil. The background is black; Isaac's suit is black. His shirt is the color of bleached bone. He has a mustache and goatee and wears a straw hat, not the rigid cake-plate variety, but one with a sweeping scimitar brim that imparts to him the look of a French painter or riverboat gambler. A darkness suffuses the photograph. The brim shadows the top of his face. His eyes gleam from the darkness. Most striking is the careful positioning of his hands. His right rests in his lap, gripping what could be a pair of gloves. His left is positioned in midair so that the diamond on his pinkie sparks with the intensity of a star.
There is a secret embedded in this photograph. For now, however, suffice it to say the portrait suggests vanity, that Isaac was aware of himself and how he moved through the day, and saw himself as something bigger than a mere recorder of rainfall and temperature. He was a scientist, not some farmer who gauged the weather by aches in a rheumatoid knee. Isaac personally had encountered and explained some of the strangest atmospheric phenomena a weatherman could ever hope to experience, but also had read the works of the most celebrated meteorologists and physical geographers of the nineteenth century, men like Henry Piddington, Matthew Fontaine Maury, William Redfield, and James Espy, and he had followed their celebrated hunt for the Law of Storms. He believed deeply that he understood it all.
He lived in a big time, astride the changing centuries. The frontier was still a living, vivid thing, with Buffalo Bill Cody touring his Wild West Show to sellout crowds around the globe, Bat Masterson a sportswriter in New Jersey, and Frank James opening the family ranch for tours at fifty cents a head. But a new America was emerging, one with big and global aspirations. Teddy Roosevelt, flanked by his Rough Riders, campaigned for the vice presidency. U.S. warships steamed to quell the Boxers. There was fabulous talk of a great American-built canal that would link the Atlantic to the Pacific, a task at which Vicomte de Lesseps and the French had so catastrophically failed. The nation in 1900 was swollen with pride and technological confidence. It was a time, wrote Sen. Chauncey Depew, one of the most prominent politicians of the age, when the average American felt "four-hundred-percent bigger" than the year before.
There was talk even of controlling the weather--of subduing hail with cannon blasts and igniting forest fires to bring rain.
In this new age, nature itself seemed no great obstacle.
Product details
- ASIN : 0375708278
- Publisher : Vintage; 1st edition (July 11, 2000)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 323 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780375708275
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375708275
- Lexile measure : 1020L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.16 x 0.74 x 7.93 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Natural Disasters (Books)
- #1 in Atmospheric Sciences (Books)
- #21 in U.S. State & Local History
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Erik Larson is the author of six previous national bestsellers—The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than twelve million copies. His books have been published in nearly forty countries.
Isaac Monroe Cline (October 13, 1861 - August 3, 1955) was the chief meteorologist at the Galveston, Texas office of the U.S. Weather Bureau from 1889 to 1901. In that role, he became an integral figure in the devastating Galveston hurricane of 1900.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Photo by unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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While Isaac Cline serves as Larson's main source, the book is more of a story about the hurricane than about Isaac himself. Still, Isaac Cline was a fascinating character and Larson gives a detailed history of his early life and education background. It quickly becomes apparent that Cline was a good man trying to do his best to understand and predict the weather despite working for the incompetent US Weather Bureau. Isaac Cline's shortcomings were not directly his fault, as he lived in a time of limited technology and scientific understanding of the weather and a career dependent upon keeping his superiors appeased.
The Weather Bureau's Washington officials, headed by Willis Moore, were more interested in raising their own stature than improving their department. The Bureau's forecasts took on an aura of supreme confidence, characterized by a "complete absence of doubt or qualification." (Larson 114). Ignoring evidence to the contrary, they predicted the incoming disturbance to recurve northward before reaching Texas, since that's what all West Indies hurricanes did. In reality, the disturbance was a powerful storm guided westward by high pressure over the eastern US.
The Bureau also clashed with Cuban weather forecasters, who were decades ahead of their time due to the warning system established by Fr. Bernito Vines in the late 1800s. Larson's analysis of the romantic nature of Cuban forecasters may contain some hyperbole, but the primary theme is that the Cubans took the cautious approach due to the uncertainty of forecasting, while the optimistic US Weather Bureau would not even mention the word "hurricane" in its forecasts in order not to agitate the public. The decision by Moore to block weather cables from Cuba would be considered criminal by today's standards.
Since the Weather Bureau's leadership was counterproductive, the reader may hope that Isaac Cline will step up as the hero and save the residents of Galveston from impending doom. Isaac, the loyal servant, was not up to the task. He gave lectures and wrote editorials supporting the idea that the island was safe from a major disaster. One of the biggest strengths of Isaac's Storm is Larson's analysis of Galveson islands' attitude, corroborated by Cline, toward the island's vulnerability. At the turn of the century, Americans began to feel invincible to natural disasters. The iron, steel, and steam age was at its peak and people were rushing to western boomtowns with promises of wealth and success. Galveston was also in direct competition with Houston as Texas' port city, so it certainly could not show any sign of weakness.
Any natural disaster of this magnitude requires a perfect hit and a long list of contributing factors. But above all, the science and technology had not yet reached the level needed to prevent a disaster. In the 21st Century, people still live dangerously close to the coast, track forecasts can still go wrong, and people still are reluctant to evacuate. The difference is that there is an advanced communication and rescue network to relay the latest information and advise people to leave, or save them if they are trapped. As Larson notes, even a minor upgrade such as ship radios would have allowed the Louisiana to radio ahead and warn Galveston that a hurricane was coming. As Larson's map shows, not all of Galveston Island was covered in water, so the death toll could have been mitigated with any sort of definite warning about the hazard that was approaching.
Larson focuses mostly on the human and societal causes and impacts, but also includes a brief but dramatic elucidation of the hurricane's inception from an easterly wave into a dangerous cyclone. The account was well researched and is meteorologically correct, but the power of the storm is much better described by firsthand observations than by the combination of scientific definitions and vivid imagery of water vapor condensing, rising, and mixing while African children observe the clouds (Larson 22).
As a reporter and historian, Larson is charged with uncovering the "whys" and "hows" of the Galveston Hurricane and connecting them with the broader themes of US History. To an extent it is necessary to describe the basic laws of nature that govern the hurricane and the prevailing wind patterns that guided it straight to Galveston. Hurricanes are ferocious and extremely powerful, but their purpose is to redistribute heat in the atmosphere and ocean, not to punish the ignorant humans that dared build a city on its coastline.
The above is not necessarily intended as a critique of Larson, as his descriptions of the developing hurricane are pithy and limited to early in the book. Still, Larson's third-person storm narratives, specifically pages 26-27, are too melodramatic. Larson introduces Chaos Theory as the cause of the hurricane's formation and then quotes William Jennings Bryan's famous refute of manifest destiny spoken merely a month before the Galveston Hurricane:
Destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate, who, lacking the courage to oppose error, seeks some plausible excuse for supporting it.
The quote does sum up the errors of the Weather Bureau, Galveston residents, and Isaac, but the quote is out of place without a deeper explanation of the political and cultural feuds ongoing at the time. It would have been interesting and pertinent to add more about the prevailing culture instead of the mechanics of hurricane formation. Considering the number of mistakes leading up to the hurricane, one might have expected some redemption or admission of failure in Isaac's Storm's closing chapters. Unfortunately, Larson finds that little was learned. Galveston constructed a sea wall that has since held, but it was impossible to save the city's once booming economy. Willis Moore of the Weather Bureau fabricated Isaac Cline's account into folklore, suggesting that thousands of lives were saved by the Bureau and that hurricane warnings had been issued in advance. Neither was true. Moore wrote the storm off as an anomaly, a freak of nature (Larson 272). Larson notes that a few editorials were critical of the Bureau, but Moore covered up the injustices for the most part. We now know that the Galveston storm did not precipitate reform and history repeated itself in the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane.
Considering the book's title, the most surprising conclusion is that Isaac Cline is not the hero of the Galveston Hurricane. Cline did his best, but his weather knowledge and instincts were simply not enough with the technology of the time and conflicting bureau instincts. Haunted by the storm, Isaac went on to become a leading hurricane expert, especially in the area of storm surge, which was the primary killer in Galveston. Isaac never forgot that his decisions cost many lives, including some of his family members. A storm of this caliber changes history forever and most of it is not for the better.
To aid understanding visually, Isaac's Storm could have benefited from some pictures of the devastation and a map of Galveston Bay. While describing the aftermath, Larson quotes several residents and visitors who explain they were left speechless or that words could not describe the devastation. Although the book omits pictures, it is easy to look a few up on the internet (see Wikipedia)
A map of the Galveston Bay area from the time would also have been helpful. Galveston Island's geographic location explains how storm surge battered the island from both directions, but it was hard to envision Larson's descriptions without seeing how the long fetch from a northerly wind could create a surge on the backside of the island. In addition, the locations of various railroads and the large bridge were left to the readers' imagination.
The 1900 Galveston Hurricane goes down in the record books as the deadliest hurricane in US History by far, with an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 dead. Considering the devastation and the wealth of available primary sources, it is surprising that it took until the 100th anniversary for an historian to write a full account of the storm. With hurricane science finally advancing significantly in the 1940s, a death toll of this magnitude will almost certainly never be seen again in the US. Unfortunately, science and advance warnings cannot protect property, and we have seen Miami (1926) and New Orleans (2005) both suffer long term economic damage. Future hurricanes will undoubtedly wipe out coastal development again.
Those who follow recent US Hurricanes may also be left wondering why the Galveston Hurricane was an impressive Category 4 at landfall, while other recent hurricanes such as Rita (2005) and Ike (2008) weakened before landfall in the western Gulf. The most likely explanation is that a warm eddy broke off from the loop current and drifted westward until it was in shallow water off the Texas coast. With no cold water below to mix upward, the storm was able to intensify in a region that is generally incapable of maintaining a Category 4 hurricane. Since Larson took the time to describe how hurricanes form, he should have gone into more detail about the loop current eddies.
Isaac's Storm is a well researched book that is enlightening and informative for both the weather enthusiast and the average reader. The chronicles of the weather bureau's failures are especially stunning. Where historical details were not available, Larson constructs a reasonable story to help the reader envision life at the end of the nineteenth century. The accounts of the storm are as vivid and terrifying as a horror novel. What is most interesting about Isaac's Storm is not just Isaac Cline's personal beliefs, but the defiant attitude of technological superiority that permeated through all levels of society from common citizens up to the US government officials. Galveston in 1900 was extremely vulnerable to any kind of storm surge and there was precedent from the 1886 Indianola Hurricane. Ignorance and overconfidence were a deadly combination.
in any and all ages.
As you can imagine, weather forecasting, at the turn of the 20th century, was in its infancy, especially as regards tropical storms and hurricanes. The 1900 Galveston hurricane hit a Texas coast that was completely unprepared, at least partially as a result of conflict between American and Cuban weather services.
Unbeknownst to me, Galveston was one of the most prosperous cities in the United States at the time of the hurricane, eclipsing its next-door neighbor, Houston, as the port of choice for the region. The hurricane largely destroyed the city and allowed Houston to supplant Galveston for regional supremacy.
The story has many interesting tidbits, not just as relates to Galveston and the hurricane, but also the formation and early operation of the National Weather Service and previous posting held by Cline.
The book is rather short and contains a few silly exaggerations, such as claiming that Cline registered a temperature of 134 degrees one summer in Amarillo, and that a raging flood resulted from an upstream hailstorm in the same area, due solely from melting of the hail stones. It also claims storm surges of over 30 feet for the Galveston Hurricane, which certainly seems unlikely.
All in all, a short entertaining read, but not exceptional.
I currently live, and grew up in, the southeast part of Houston, just 30 miles from Galveston. We regard Galveston as our most fun and magical sister-city. From the time I was a child to just last month, when I go over the Causeway on I-45 and onto the island, if feel like the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy goes from sepia Kansas into Technicolor Oz. I truly love Galveston and have always been enamored with her rich history. (Thank goodness its Juneteeth history has finally been recognized with a Federal Holiday!)
All that to say that I found Larson’s account to be well researched, rich is detail, riveting, and both heartbreaking and hopeful. I don’t read much non-fiction, but this was as engrossing and “close to home”.
Book Club read,but decided it would not be a good discussion book. However I found this book very interesting and historically informative.
Top reviews from other countries
A gripping narrative from the first page to the final crescendo, an inspiring true story.