Several years ago (2007 and 2008) I wrote a pair of diaries about hurricane books. As we are all watching Irene, I thought it might be a good time to update it and make some recommendations in case you want some reading material. I have copied in some of the earlier recommendations, but there are some new ones here, too.
Enjoy (?) and stay safe.
Since I wrote those diaries, I have continued to read books, and have a record of an early hurricane to recommend. This is an account of the 1856 hurricane that took out the Isle Dernier, off the coast of New Orleans (the sort of place people would go to escape the epidemic miasmas of the city during the summer). Half the people who were here in early August died, and the island was wiped off the map, quite literally. A very interesting and well-written account is given in Island in a Storm: A Rising Sea, a Vanishing Coast, and a Nineteenth-Century Disaster that Warns of a Warmer World by Abby Sallenger. I have just discovered there is another account of the storm, by Bill Dixon. I have ordered it. We will see how it is. I didn't know anything about the storm before reading the first book, and frankly, that is why I read.
The first book about a hurricane I read was inspired by the trips I used to make to visit a friend whose parents lived in Galveston, TX. The worst mainland hurricane in terms of number of people killed (estimates range from some 8000 (the NOAA story says more than 6000 but it may have been up to 12,000 or even more. The number of blacks killed was not well recorded). This has been the subject of the most popular book ever written about a hurricane, Isaac's Storm, and it is a good book. There are maps here (including a street map that indicates the location of various places discussed in the text, including the homes of various people). It starts with a discussion of the discovery of hurricanes, and to me one of the most interesting parts is the section about Columbus and his encounters with hurricanes (pp. 40-43). In addition to the history of the hurricane, Larson writes interestingly about the development of the National Weather Service in the later 19th century). I recommend this book highly, and if you have to pick just one book about a hurricane, this is one of the two I would recommend. The other is about the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane.
The best book I think I have ever read about a hurricane is one I ordered from a remainders bookseller, and only got because I had enjoyed Isaac's Storm and wanted to read about another hurricane. This book is Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 by Willie Drye. It starts out with a fantastic map, detailed and clear. And the text is very easy to follow, in an hour by hour discussion of this, the most powerful hurricane ever documented to have hit the continental United States. This storm hit the Florida Keys, and was small enough that it scarcely affected the islands of Key Largo (at the northern end of the archipelago) or Key West (at its southern and western end). But it had the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded at hurricane landfall in the United States (26.35 inches officially, or 892 mb, but reports as low as 26.00 inches seem pretty reasonable). The storm destroyed the Florida East Coast Railway that ran to Key West, which had been completed just before the First World War. The storm surge wiped a train off its track (so when they tell you don't drive across water on the road, take them seriously -- it can be really dangerous) and scoured several islands down to the coral foundation. There were officially 408 people killed, but there were quite possibly more. Many of those killed were WWI veterans who were sent to work camps in the Keys to work on the highway that was planned to link the Keys to the mainland. The storm occurred on the Labor Day weekend, and many of the officials who could order the evacuation of the workers from the Keys were on vacation, and their subordinates waited too long to take responsibility. The stories of the storm surge and the winds are incredible. And the author was able to interview survivors, which gives the book even more immediacy. This is well written, excitingly-told, and the story itself is absolutely riveting.
Another book about the 1935 hurricane isHemingway's Hurricane by Phil Scott. This suffers in comparison with the wonderful Storm of the Century, but it is certainly worth reading. Its focus is on the outrage that Hemingway felt at the poor treatment of the veterans.
Obviously at the moment, we are all obsessed with the 1938 "Long Island Express." When I went to the PBS American Experience page the show that was highlighted is the one on the 1938 hurricane. If you haven't watched it, you should -- it is a marvelous documentary. It was perhaps the most unexpected storm in the 20th century. This was a hurricane that had been predicted to hit Florida, perhaps as far south as Miami, but unexpectedly it turned north, and sped up the Atlantic coast far enough out to sea that few realized its exact direction or speed. It hit New England after an exceedingly wet summer (the third wettest in records) and September itself had been very wet (the storm hit New England on September 21st). It also hit at high tide, the tide at the autumnal equinox, which is the highest of the year. It was a disaster in the making as it strengthened, riding the warm water of the gulf stream some 700 miles north in just twelve hours, one of the fastest moving hurricanes ever recorded. When it hit Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island the evening of the 21st it was completely unexpected.
This is the hurricane in which Katherine Hepburn lost her family's house. Her story is one of several woven into one of two books on this hurricane in my collection. Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R.A. Scotti is an interesting and well-written book, carefully interweaving a series of stories. The maps are scattered through the text (when reading I put some post it notes on the map pages so I could check them again) and the pictures are printed on the same paper stock as the text, meaning the quality of reproduction is not particularly good. But otherwise the text is relatively easy to follow, and as I indicated, the content is fascinating. The other two books in my collection are Cherie Burn's The Great Hurricane: 1938, which reads as a more personal account, and probably reflects the difference in authors' backgrounds. Scotti is a novelist who writes thrillers, while Burns writes for Glamour, Working Woman, and New York, as well as The New York Times. I preferred Sudden Sea, which was denser (the print size was awkwardly large in the hardcover I have of The Great Hurricane: 1938. The Great Hurricane: 1938 had a map only on the first page of photographs. However, the photographs are printed on better quality paper than in the Scotti book.
The other account I have is from a reporter who covered it during the event itself. A Wind to Shake the World is quite quirky as a first person account, but has a fascinating view of New England at the end of the Great Depression (remember, 1938 was just after the downturn in 1937). I recommend it as well.
Hurricane Audrey: The Deadly Storm of 1957 was about a storm I vaguely knew about, but was spectacular in its devastation. Audrey was a category 4 when she blew ashore 12 hours before the expected time. All the tv stations and radio stations had signed off the air after the 10 pm news and so no one was expecting her to show up the next morning. She sped up, and took aim straight on the border between Texas and Louisiana, the exact spot where 48 years later, Rita would come ashore. There is an argument that Rita had so little loss of life (one person, probably) because the locals remembered Audrey, not because of the just-previous devastation of Katrina. I did not like the first 100 pages of this book. It was full of rather awkwardly-written foreshadowing along the lines of "little did she know that the hurricane that would destroy her house was speeding up..." But when the hurricane arrives, and particularly in the aftermath of the hurricane, when the discussion of the snakes sharing the trees with people etc., the book becomes much more than it has been, and in the last 150 pages you have a truly fascinating discussion. Audrey tends to get overwritten by discussions of Camille, but I think it was certainly an important hurricane and this (written by someone who went through the storm when she was a child) is a fitting discussion.
I have several books on Hurricane Camille, but Category 5: The Story of Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America's Most Violent Hurricane is a pretty good one. It has a more sober discussion of some of the legends associated with Camille (the hurricane party, for example, which didn't happen as it is usually reported). It also has a really good discussion of the local memories of previous hurricanes, and is really well-written (at least so I remember -- at the moment it is on loan to my brother in Denver so I don't have it to look at). What frustrated me was the maps which were lacking at times that I needed them.
The next book I would recommend to you is The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome, which is about one of the strongest storms of the 1990s, a storm that devastated Central America, and took the flagship of Windjammer Cruises. This book, while in a way a love letter to the care-free cruising that was Windjammer in the 90s, also is a balanced view of a company that was probably going to end up with some disaster sooner or later. For me the most devastating part of the book is the discussion of an image taken by a hurricane-hunter flight that probably records the moment the Fantome went down (and it must have gone down quickly, as very little of the boat ever was recovered). I have gone back to this book a couple of times, which says something...
The last two I will mention are also largely about sailors who experienced a hurricane, largely for the worse. At the Mercy of the Sea is about three men caught in the 1999 Hurricane Lenny. And of course, there is the riveting The Perfect Storm in which Sebastian Junger teaches you about swordfish fishing and rescue swimmers and ghosts and meteorology and the Halloween storm that really was a 1991 hurricane that had reformed, but did not merit a new name or the old name, as it was not tropical when it took out the various boats that are tracked in his book. If you haven't read it you really should -- while it made a fine film, it is not nearly as good on film as on the page.
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So for those of us not in the path of the hurricane here are some recommendations. And perhaps a Christmas present for those who have gone through Irene... What? Too soon?
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Again, be safe, friends.
