A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes
From the moment European colonists laid violent claim to this land, hurricanes have had a profound and visceral impact on American history— yet, no one has attempted to write the definitive account of America’s entanglement with these meteorological behemoths. Now, bestselling historian Eric Jay Dolin presents the five-hundred-year story of American hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus’ New World voyages, to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the escalation of hurricane season as a result of global warming. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of characters, including Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, Katharine Hepburn, and Steven Spielberg, 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. A necessary work of environmental and cultural history, A Furious Sky will change the way we understand the storms on the horizon of America’s future. To learn more about this book, and its author, please visit www.ericjaydolin.com.
“Dolin masterfully recounts the history of momentous nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientific discoveries that led to a better understanding of the physical nature of hurricanes and our ability to monitor their paths. How and where the storms form, their general courses and finally their relationships to the laws of physics launches the reader into an intellectual adventure—and, at times, a very wild ride. . . . Dolin has written many first-rate maritime-focused books and has received several well-deserved literary awards for his efforts. A Furious Sky is among his best, an excellent resource for any layman who wonders about the weather and the future of our planet.”—Louis Arthur Norton, The Northern Mariner
Eric Jay Dolin is the author of fourteen books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U.S. Maritime History. His most recent book before A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes was Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, which was chosen as a “Must-Read” book for 2019 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and was a finalist for the 2019 Julia Ward Howe Award given by the Boston Author’s Club. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, where he received his PhD in environmental policy, Dolin lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his family.