Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

AUTHOR: Erik Larson
PUBLISHED: 1999*
GENRE: American History

You're going to hate me after this one. 

It's not easy to describe how horrifying, how tragic, how heart-wrenching this book is.  You need to read it anyway.

Isaac's Storm is the story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, so called because it completely decimated Galveston, Texas, a little spit of land in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Isaac of Issac's Storm is Isaac Cline, Galveston's resident meteorologist.  Galveston in 1900 was on the verge of greatness, having cemented its reputation as a beautiful resort town, an Atlantic City for the Texas Coast.  A feeling of invincibility has taken over the town and its officials, who believe they have conquered Mother Nature with their modern technologies.  When reports start coming in of a storm in the gulf, Cline tells the residents not to worry, they need not evacuate.  The storm will blow by.

It does not blow by.  It builds and builds until it strikes Galveston with an unimaginable force that tears the town apart by the seams.  Its residents are caught completely unprepared, having been assured that they were safe, and can only watch in horror as the sea advances, up the beach, up the sidewalks, up the stairs, until there is no where else to go but underwater.  And when the water receeds, those still living must face streets where piles of dead bodies have replaced stately homes.

It is not known how many people died in the Galveston Hurricane.  6,000 is a conservative estimate.  I'm not going to try to tell you the individual stories - they are too horrific to summerize.  I'll let Larson shoulder that burden.  But it's important to hear them.  It's important to not forget them.  Because Galveston, Texas?  It's been rebuilt.  There's a seawall now, but the town still sits at the mercy of the sea.  And if we forget that, who knows that could happen.
LENGTH: 273 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No, even though it should be.  Larson has been getting quite a bit of praise for his newest book, In the Garden of the Beast.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Like I said, you'll hate me, but yes.

*This book was published prior to Hurricane Katrina, so I'm not sure that the title of deadliest hurricane in history still applies.  It doesn't make it any less harrowing.