Hurricaneville Book Reviews For 2007 Coming

Good morning again everyone. While I haven’t been updating the site much at times this summer, I still have stayed focused on reading books on past hurricanes. This summer, I’ve read ten books so far this summer including several major reads that I plan to have reviews on. They are the following:

All of these books were wonderful books to read and enjoy while I had free time. The Great Deluge is a book written by Douglas Brinkley, a famous historian from Tulane University, who has just completed a book about former President Ronald Reagan. Of all the books I’ve read in my life, Brinkley’s book about Hurricane Katrina, and the breaching of the levees in New Orleans was the longest book ever with 624 pages. It seemed like a rather daunting task for me to read such a huge book by my standards, but knowing that I had to turn it back in to my local library, I got going on it in the middle of June, and actually finished it with a day or two to spare. It was a very riveting book that caught my attention from start to finish.

Another book that purchased this summer was Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast by Philip D. Hearn. This book was perhaps not as detailed as many of the books that I’ve read on past hurricanes, but Camille was a very small storm although it was very powerful. Nevertheless, Hearn does a great job of explaining the damage Camille did as a tropical storm and depression in Virginia. Many people do not realize the devastation that the storm did in much of that state with torrential rains and flooding that cost many lives and did a great deal of damage. In addition, and more importantly, Hearn goes to great lengths to dispel mistruths about what went on at the notorious Richelieu Apartments as Camille, one of three Category Five Hurricanes on record to make landfall in the United States, was coming ashore. For years, Mary Ann Gerlach, who many of you might have seen in hurricane documentaries such as Danger’s Edge by the Weather Channel in 1991, stated that a hurricane party was going on there much to the anger and dismay of some of the survivors from that area. However, Hearn states in the book that no such party occurred on that fateful evening.

The third major book I read in the summer of 2007 was Cathy C. Post’s, Hurricane Audrey: The Deadly Storm of 1957. Post is actually a descendant of the first recorded death from the storm, Alice Cagle Marshall. Moreover, this was the first book ever written by Post. There were several interesting facts about the storm that I didn’t know. One that Hurricane Audrey, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the month of June, not only intensified, but picked up in forward speed. Two, the storm was the only storm ever recorded to have a direct path north from start to finish, and also strike the coast head on. And, three, that the residents of Cameron Parish as well as nearby areas in Southwestern Louisiana, were never notified about the change in intensity, and more importantly, forward speed of the storm. Consequently, a couple lawsuits were made against the Weather Bureau, the predecessor to the National Weather Service, but they were eventually dismissed. This Category Four Hurricane was also one of the deadliest storms ever with over 500 people killed.

The latest book that I’ve been reading is Killer ‘Cane by Robert Mykle, which is about the deadly Lake Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928. This storm ranks up there with the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 as the deadliest hurricane in United States History with over 1,800 deaths. It describes how the land boom and bust that occurred in Florida back in the early portion of the 20th Century was led on by the fact that the climate was largely dominated by a decadal downturn in tropical activity in the Atlantic resulting from a persistent El Nino pattern, and drought conditions across Africa. In addition, like many in Galveston prior to the 1900 storm, nobody in the Everglades believed that a hurricane could cause such problems there. Helping create the feeling of invincibility was the development of canals, locks, and dikes during the fifteen to twenty years prior to the hurricane. The devastating year of 1926 that included the memorable Miami Hurricane in September, didn’t do much either to sway people from believing that living along Lake Okeechobee was potentially a deadly decision.

The last book that I’ve taken on this summer is another book by Jay Barnes and the University of North Carolina Press called Faces From the Flood: Hurricane Floyd Remembered. I’ve reviewed another book by Barnes called, North Carolina’s Hurricane History, which I’ve read a couple times since purchasing it several years ago. This particular book provides the images of the human toll created by the terrible floods spawned by the torrential rainfall from Hurricane Floyd in September 1999. In addition to the devastation it caused in the Tar Heel State, Floyd brought flooding rains to New Jersey including those that spawned the last great floods in Bound Brook and Manville before the terrible April Nor’easter that took place this spring (2007).

I plan to have reviews of these books out in the upcoming weeks and months. Be on the lookout for them.