ISAAC'S STORM

The deadliest natural disaster in America is told by one of the rising stars in literature, Erik Larson. The time is 1900; the place is Galveston, Texas; the event is a massive hurricane aimed directly at the Texas island. This storm will kill 6,000 to 12,000 people depending on which report you read over the next hundred years. How did it come without warning? Why didn't the newly formed U.S Weather Bureau take this storm seriously? This is the main theme of this non-fiction thriller.

It seems that there are several reasons for the lack of a forewarning. The main reason seems to be the imperialistic attitude of the U.S.Weather Bureau in Cuba. They did everything they could do to muffle the so called alarmism of the Cuban weather forecasters. Even though the Cubans were more experienced with hurricanes, the U.S. thought that their dire warnings caused unnecessary panic. Therefore, the hurricane that just passed Cuba in a much milder form was not judged to be extremely dangerous to the U.S. coast. According to the Cuban forecasters, that was a huge mistake.

The second problem was that the U.S. Weather Bureau's agent in Galveston, Isaac Cline. Mr. Cline, had previously published a book which stated that no hurricane could do severe damage to the Galveston/ Gulf area. That alone stopped the proposed building of a seawall. On the day of the hurricane, Isaac finally gave in and said that he urged people to get off the beach and seek higher ground. He said he saved at least 6,000 lives, yet no witness was ever found to substantiate his claimed warning. The book is filled with short, sad stories about local families that survived and those that didn't.

The loss of human life was much greater than The Johnstown Flood of 1889, which killed 2,000 people, or The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, which killed 3,000 people. The only good to come out of the Galveston hurricane was that the island finally got their seawall, and the U.S. Weather Bureau paid far more attention to hurricanes and to local prognosticators. As with any Erik Larson book, it was an extremely exciting, well written book and I would highly recommend it to readers of all genres.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: This was the third book Erik Larson wrote and I believe it ignited his new pattern of writing fresh and exciting non-fiction. Since Larson studied Russian History at the University of Pennsylvania, I'm waiting for a non fiction book involving Russia. Let's do it! He has taught non-fiction writing to several schools including the University of Oregon - lucky students!