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Title: Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R.A. Scotti ISBN: 0-316-73911-1 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 03 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Storm of the Century
Comment: I started reading this book on Saturday and was finished on Monday morning. It completely held my interest. I enjoyed the human element and couldn't wait to find out what happened to the many people in this devasting hurricane. Each account was breath-taking. It makes me want to know more...I am recommending this book to everyone I come in contact with. That anyone lived through this storm was amazing. It makes you realize what is really important in life. I enjoyed the author's telling of this story.
Rating: 4
Summary: Sudden storm sends shockwaves to end summer on somber note
Comment: This is nice read, an almost pleasant (but, strangely, not gripping) saga of the great New England Hurricane of September 21,1938. Much of the focus of the storm and the story is on the wealthy Hampton areas of Long Island and the Newport area of Rhode Island. Scotti sets the time and place well: the end of the Depression (with the damage still evident), the brewing war in Europe, and the start of the university school year. This storm came not only at an unusual time but also at unusual places. Much of the damage to homes is the result of wealthy people taking advantage of splendid if dangerous views of the ocean. Some of the dead are domestics left behind to shutter summer homes.
"Sea" offers a clear companion and comparison to "Isaac's Storm," the epic of the Galveston hurricane of 1900. "Sea" is able to focus much more on the human element of the catastrophe, using interviews with survivors, photographs (fourteen glossy pages), and records that were just not kept in or saved from 1900. Survivors are alive today. "Sea" is more about the people who fought, including some who survived, the storm. In "Sea," a smug senior forecaster in Washington, DC dismisses the hurricane forecast of an assistant, striking the word 'hurricane' from the assistant's report for September 21 and leading to a lack of warning to the targeted, highly populated areas. The fact that such a storm was unique or that most of the Atlantic's similar storms pushed to the northeast and out to sea was not a good reason to ignore the disastrous consequences of the "Bermuda high" that kept the storm closer to land. The post-storm analysis may have been the real impetus for the modernization of weather forecasting. repairing the damage to railroads, telephone lines, livestock and roads helped usher in the modern age. Air passenger traffice between New York and Boston increased 500% in the week after the storm.
Scotti, a journalist and mystery novelist, uses words well. "Sea" is laden with brief, connected, poignant stories. Capturing the wildness of the sea and storms is no small task. Scotti even includes a brief set of scenes from the life of Katherine Hepburn from that day: swimming and golfing in Connecticut, before seeing her estate, Tara, being washed away. "Sea: has about five small maps; each could have used a bit more detail. And a larger map, tracking the entire storm of its short life, would have been a good, consistent visual reference point for the reader, and would provide more of the dynamic nature of the storm. Without it, some of the stories are static and difficult to connect.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting book on well-known and published hurricane
Comment: The beginning of the book hooked me...but somewhere mid-stream it became a hard read...it took about 6 sittings to read the 240ish page book. Meteorology was barely touched upon, which is fine, considering the Weather Bureau was only taking surface observations at the time and any other deductions would be mere guess-work. Besides, non-mets usually make all kinds of errors, such as assuming the Saffir-Simpson Scale was in use (I don't even think the term "Great Hurricane" had been coined as of that time.) One of the forecasters involved actually became one of the best-skilled hurricane forecasters around...it would have been nice if she expounded on his later career, but no matter.
It seemed like the author tried too hard to weave the individual stories together, and I got lost when going back and forth from different spots in Rhode Island and Long Island. I felt like I was adrift in the storm myself. I did like how she followed up on the characters who survived...that was a nice touch. If you're interested in southern New England and weather, this should be a good buy.
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Title: Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 by Willie Drye ISBN: 0792280105 Publisher: National Geographic Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Dark Tide : The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo ISBN: 0807050202 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 02 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0066212855 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Lost in Mongolia : Rafting the World's Last Unchallenged River by Colin Angus ISBN: 0767912802 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds by Mike Stanton ISBN: 0375507809 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 05 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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