A review by brontherun
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson
3.0
Within this story of a storm, lies the tale of two brothers. They lived together, they worked at the same government agency. They were additional parental units to the other's kids. And the natural schisms that existed in any relationship were blown wide open through the interactions and decisions they made in the face of the most deadly natural disaster in U.S. history. Isaac and Joseph Kline would not be living together, or working in the same building, 3 months after the hurricane hit. Their relationship would further diverge until they did not have contact the last years of their lives. The 1900 storm that blew away the Texas coastal town of Galveston, had the power to even break the bonds of families.
This is also the story of American hubris leading to monumental incompetence in government, which resulted in the loss life for thousands of American citizens. While this event happened 120 years ago, the systemic government problems that exacerbated the event, and the personal and political machinations that hindered a response, are very much lessons for today. Larson states, "Against the hubris of the day, what was a mere hurricane?" Today, we might substitute virus for hurricane for an equally valid point.
As one progresses through Isaac's Storm, it is impossible not to think about Hurricane Katrina. The book was published 6 years before Katrina, but the lessons like lack of preparation/avoidance activities and failure to recognize the extent of heated bay water at play in summer storms are there. Most significantly, delays and lack of funds for infrastructure projects (a sea wall in Galveston, the levees in Katrina) stand out as begging for comparison.
The toll in lives is not comparable - 1,836 for Katrina, with estimates anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 for Galveston.
This is one of Larson's earlier works, and it does not transport me in the same way some of his other books have. But it is still hauntingly beautiful. One of my favorite passages:
"Cuban meteorologists had the same instruments as their American counterparts, and took the same measurements, but read into them vastly greater potential for evil. The Cubans wrote of hunches and beliefs, sunsets and foreboding. Where the Americans saw numbers, the Cubans saw poetry. Dark poetry, perhaps. The works of Poe and Baudelaire, but poetry all the same."
While I am a firm believer that the answers to helping one another survive may be found in science, without the compassion of the human angle, the science we developed will be used for profit or personal/political gain, not to benefit us all. That is a lesson we are obviously still learning, either via historical lessons of the Weather Bureau and its flubbing of the 1900 hurricane, or current events and our government agencies' inability to respond effectively to our modern disasters.
This is also the story of American hubris leading to monumental incompetence in government, which resulted in the loss life for thousands of American citizens. While this event happened 120 years ago, the systemic government problems that exacerbated the event, and the personal and political machinations that hindered a response, are very much lessons for today. Larson states, "Against the hubris of the day, what was a mere hurricane?" Today, we might substitute virus for hurricane for an equally valid point.
As one progresses through Isaac's Storm, it is impossible not to think about Hurricane Katrina. The book was published 6 years before Katrina, but the lessons like lack of preparation/avoidance activities and failure to recognize the extent of heated bay water at play in summer storms are there. Most significantly, delays and lack of funds for infrastructure projects (a sea wall in Galveston, the levees in Katrina) stand out as begging for comparison.
The toll in lives is not comparable - 1,836 for Katrina, with estimates anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 for Galveston.
This is one of Larson's earlier works, and it does not transport me in the same way some of his other books have. But it is still hauntingly beautiful. One of my favorite passages:
"Cuban meteorologists had the same instruments as their American counterparts, and took the same measurements, but read into them vastly greater potential for evil. The Cubans wrote of hunches and beliefs, sunsets and foreboding. Where the Americans saw numbers, the Cubans saw poetry. Dark poetry, perhaps. The works of Poe and Baudelaire, but poetry all the same."
While I am a firm believer that the answers to helping one another survive may be found in science, without the compassion of the human angle, the science we developed will be used for profit or personal/political gain, not to benefit us all. That is a lesson we are obviously still learning, either via historical lessons of the Weather Bureau and its flubbing of the 1900 hurricane, or current events and our government agencies' inability to respond effectively to our modern disasters.