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

I had never given much thought to the origins of weather forecasting. This book goes through much of the history (and the politics) of how it all began in the US through the life of weatherman Issac Cline, who, in being a perfect product of his time, makes it all fascinating . I did not want to put this book down. This book takes us back and forth between the history of weather and the creation and path of a dangerous storm that eventually devastates a Texas coastal town.
Highly recommend!

Isaac's Storm,a non -fiction account of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, reads like a book of fiction. Itis all true. If you are interested in the weather and how The U.S. Weather Bureau began, or if you love to vacation on Galveston Island this is a must read. Thunderstruck and Devil in the White City by this auther are also really good.
J.S. Texas

Much national attention was paid to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, and rightly so, but as Erik Larson so vividly illustrates in this book, there have always been harrowing storms. There has just not been, until recent years, the capability for extensive media coverage to keep everyone informed. In ISAAC'S STORM, Mr. Larson weaves a tense historical account of the approach of "the deadliest hurricane in history" to the then teeming city of Galveston, TX. The author also brings insight into the struggles of a fledgling national weather bureau, but the real heart of the book is the page-turning narrative of ordinary people dealing with the unbelievable effects of a monster storm.

I first read The Devil in the White City so decided to try Isaac's Storm. While The Devil in the White City had a storyline and inter-woven characters, Isaac's Storm read more like a term paper. I guess I was hoping to find more of a plot in there somewhere (beyond character introduction and the account of the storm). To me, it seemed to drag on a bit with constant name-dropping from Larson's extensive research.

If you're looking to read up on the Galveston hurricane, it's a great book and sets you right in the middle of things. I was hoping for something more, however.

I really enjoyed the suspensefully written, detailed narrative of the event itself, but what this book also has that others often don't get into is the ways in which American science and policies always seem to get warped by our own parochial perspectives. A major irony in this book is that American meteorologists couldn't give Cuban meteorologists their due and benefit from what the Cubans knew. So our weirdness around Cuba and our need to feel somehow superior to the Latin parts of the Americas goes way back. God forbid the Cubans should know more about hurricanes (whose path they all live in) than bureaucratic American scientists, even a hundred years ago.