- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (Jun 16 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 038546956X
- ISBN-13: 978-0385469562
- Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 1.6 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,277,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Journalist David Laskin writes, "The history of weather is both a history of nature and a history of human desire. A history that is made and erased every day." And the history of American weather is particularly problematic: "Our weather and climate have been strange since the beginning of our history. Our perceptions have always been skewed by expectation, our memories distorted by self-interest." From a European perspective, North American weather is never usual: it is too hot, too cold, too violent, and, for most of the continent, much too dry. But Americans' minds never quite catch up with the weather where they actually live: "When we move, weather is the last thing we leave behind and the first thing we find when we arrive. Weather, in a sense, is home." Laskin's great insight is that the weather is never what we expect, because we always misremember the past. And in America in particular, this unexpected weather is always a sign of something: God's vengeance, human tampering, the progress or the regress of civilization. Laskin covers American weather from the warm spell that lured the Norse to Greenland, through the little ice age and the dust bowl, up to the greenhouse anxieties of the turn of the millennium. "We are constantly making and revising the history of weather, but weather itself is ahistorical. Infinite, fathomless, incalculable, it just keeps happening, regardless, every day." --Mary Ellen Curtin
From Publishers Weekly
Laskin (A Common Life) contends that weather is a "human fabrication": the condition of the heavens becomes what we call "weather" only "after it has touched us and we have touched it." Thanks to the science of dendrochronology, it is possible to determine what American weather was like in prehistory, but the subject becomes more absorbing with the advent of the Puritans. They were devout believers in what the author terms theological meteorology, which placed the praise or blame for the vagaries of our climate on God's doorstep. Current practitioners of this applied science, aided by radar, satellites and computers, are able to bring a little order out of the chaos that is the enduring characteristic of weather. And with the development of global warming theories, more emphasis is now placed on terrestrial rather than celestial solutions to weather problems. From Native American rain dances through the establishing of the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1891 to changing styles of TV weatherpersons, Laskin engagingly covers it all.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE AMERICAN WEATHER EXPERIENCE,
By
This review is from: Braving the Elements (Hardcover)
In 'Braving the Elements', Laskin gives us a brief history of American weather and how we have survived, forcast, and endured it. The first part of the book looks at Native American and colonial weather, explaining how our perceptions of the elements were being shaped even then. A fascinating chapter looks at the West and the Great Plains, describing the tornadoes, blizzards and dust storms common to the region.The book's second half covers the National Weather Service and present-day meteorology, showing how technology has changed the art of weather forcasting. We see the daily weather report through the eyes of the weather men themselves. Laskin is a great writer whose book will appeal to weather buffs and others alike. I only wish he had spent more time covering specific storms in our history and how they have shaped communities.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Book - FAKE PHOTOS,
By
This review is from: Braving the Elements (Paperback)
It troubles me to no end that books that are to be taken as scholarly would stoop to using FAKE photographs....in this case none other than the famously fake tornado on the cover....to sell the books. I wish I knew if a) the author, being well-versed in the topic he has written about, KNOWS the photo is fake and is trying to hype his product or; b) he is ignorant of such? I am not sure which is worse? Until consumers cite their disgust with such ploys we are doomed to not knowing what is real and what is FAKE even in so-called non-fiction or "scientific" text. The publisher should be ashamed.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Suprising page-turner; great read,
This review is from: Braving the Elements (Paperback)
"Braving the Elements" is a breathtaking trek from the Ice Age to the 'Old World' of Native American North America, from the European invasion of the 'New World' through colonial times(both Jefferson and Washington kept daily weather journals and Franklin 'discovered' Nor'easters); from Lewis and Clark's journals to the hottest decade (1980s) and year (1995) on record to the Storm of the Century (1993) - the virtual history of North America all through the window of weather.From unprediactable weather in the western U.S. (half the continental US is "classified as deficient in moisture" or practically desert!) to the greenhouse effect; from lethal storms and the people who try to predict them, all aspects of weather are covered. It is an engaging and hard-to-put-down read which weaves facts, history and science into a really fascinating book. Campers, naturalists, history and weather buffs will all enjoy this engaging story.
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