Reviews

Storm Kings: The Untold History of America's First Tornado Chasers by Lee Sandlin

sindri_inn_arsaeli's review

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4.0

Quite a fascinating history, and the affection and attention the author gave to many of the people in the history of storm study was equally interesting. Who knew violent storms drew such colorful experts, or that the science of storms could be so contentious? The reader (Andrew Garman) did a wonderful job, including when physical description was needed, but I do feel I lost just a little by listening when I could have had the book in hand, as I'm certain there would have been pictures and diagrams to accompany the text. However, even while some parts of this book do strive for scientific description and would certainly have been aided by some diagrams, the focus is still squarely on the history of tornado meteorology, and the description was almost always enough for me to visualize. The Story of the science takes center stage, and holds interest very well!

bupdaddy's review

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5.0

I was astounded to learn that, until the 1800's, tornadoes weren't scientifically recognized as real. The were sort of urban legends - water spouts were known, but land versions were sort of back-engineered - if water spouts exist, we should see them on land.

Said Benjamin "drop the mic" Franklin.

Yes, like all science of the 18th century that involves the new world, the story of tornadoes goes straight through Master Franklin.

He never called them "tornadoes," though - that term was for general storms and was probably a capricious mashup, by British sailors, of a couple of other Spanish sailor terms for weather.

Tornadoes at that time were called - well, they weren't, not by Europeans. And the first nations of the American continent weren't listened to, so we had this situation where these totally real things were just known by vague stories, and Franklin surmised that these water spouts probably had land counterparts and scoured old weather reports and...

You know what? Read the book. It's good.

And you'll be stunned how late it was that the nature and mechanism of tornadoes was actually understood.
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