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A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes
A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes | Eric Jay Dolin
4 posts | 7 read | 6 to read
With A Furious Sky, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin tells the history of America itself through its five-hundred-year battle with the fury of hurricanes. Hurricanes menace North America from June through November every year, each as powerful as 10,000 nuclear bombs. These megastorms will likely become more intense as the planet continues to warm, yet we too often treat them as local disasters and TV spectacles, unaware of how far-ranging their impact can be. As best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin contends, we must look to our nations past if we hope to comprehend the consequences of the hurricanes of the future. With A Furious Sky, Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbuss New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes, such as Benito Vines, a nineteenth-century Jesuit priest whose innovative methods for predicting hurricanes saved countless lives, and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed at least 6,000 people, the highest toll of any natural disaster in American history. Dolin draws on a vast array of sources as he melds American history, as it is usually told, with the history of hurricanes, showing how these tempests frequently helped determine the nations course. Hurricanes, it turns out, prevented Spain from expanding its holdings in North America beyond Florida in the late 1500s, and they also played a key role in shifting the tide of the American Revolution against the British in the final stages of the conflict. As he moves through the centuries, following the rise of the United States despite the chaos caused by hurricanes, Dolin traces the corresponding development of hurricane science, from important discoveries made by Benjamin Franklin to the breakthroughs spurred by the necessities of the World War II and the Cold War. Yet after centuries of study and despite remarkable leaps in scientific knowledge and technological prowess, there are still limits on our ability to predict exactly when and where hurricanes will strike, and we remain terribly vulnerable to the greatest storms on earth. A Furious Sky is, ultimately, a story of a changing climate, and it forces us to reckon with the reality that as bad as the past has been, the future will probably be worse, unless we drastically reimagine our relationship with the planet.
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ralexist
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Pickpick

Growing up in Minnesota, hurricanes weren't really something I needed to worry about. Back there it was tornadoes, blizzards, droughts, flooding, ice storms, and the occasional fire, so this was highly interesting.
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As our climate changes things are only going to shift and so forewarned is forearmed. I learned a few new things and confirmed the old lesson that when it comes to a battle between humankind and Mother Nature, she will always win.

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Amiable
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Pickpick

Fascinating book about the impact hurricanes have had on the U.S. over the past 500 years. This section on how the naming convention for hurricanes was developed was both hilarious and horrifying at the thought of giving them the names of U.S. Senators. I mean, Mitch McConnell is already destroying the country from within—I don‘t want to imagine the physical destruction a Hurricane Mitch McConnell would wreak.

Trashcanman 🤣🤣🤣🙌🏼 4y
Megabooks Love it!! 😂😂 4y
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Amiable
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When you‘re trying to read and you have the feeling that someone is watching you ...
#catsoflitsy

Chab256 😂🧡 4y
Ruthiella 😹😹😹 4y
64 likes2 comments
blurb
Amiable
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When you‘re reading a book about the history of hurricanes and you find a personal narrative from one of your own ancestors describing a storm that hit New England in 1635! Richard Mather was my 10-times-great-grandfather. His son Eleazer, my 9x-great-grandpa, was born in Dorchester, Mass., in 1637, less than two years after the hurricane that his father details in his account. (Yes, I‘m a huge genealogy geek. 😬)

SamAnne Oh wow! I‘ve read a lot about the Mathers! 4y
Suet624 That‘s awesome! 4y
Ruthiella That‘s pretty neat! 😀 4y
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BarbaraBB That is very cool! 4y
Freespirit Wow..amazing! 4y
Amiable @SamAnne My great-grandpa Eleazer was Increase Mather‘s brother and Cotton Mather‘s uncle. It‘s an interesting family line to research, for sure! 4y
akfreeborn I love that. I had a client that was quoted saying “well I‘ll be damned” when Zamperini returned in Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand. We talked about it and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. This is your family that you can‘t talk to. So cool! 4y
Clare-Dragonfly Wow! That‘s super interesting! 4y
CindiB That must have been so amazing. 4y
60 likes9 comments