Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in lake charles and Cameron Parish and that whole area. We will speaking earlier and saying that theyre gonna probably have many weeks if not months of no power and having trouble with their water system. Even people as far north as shreveport and monroe are still without power. Our thoughts go out to them. Anyway, we are here and of today with jack davis in conversation with our author. Jack is the professor of history, specializing in environmental history of sustainability studies. Also the author of the pulitzer prizewinning the goals are the making of an american sea. New york times beautiful homage to a neglected lexi. In addition to the pulitzer prize, the gulf was a New York Times notable book for 2017 and made several other best of list for that year including the washington post, npr and forbes. Jack, welcome, pleasure to have you with us today. My pleasure to be here. Im going to turn the floor over to jack and eric and let them start the conversation. One final thing, people have questions they can write in the chat room and we will try to get to those questions, if not during the talk, at the very end. Also encourage people who have not gotten erics new book we will have signed copies here at the bookshop and yall can go to our website which is www. Gardendistrictbookshop. Com. Place orders or just give us a call. We are happy to ship books for you anywhere in the country and anywhere in the world. Thank you. We will start with me introducing eric. Im sure you are familiar with erics work, he he is a prolific author, is a nonfiction writer who specializes in writing history that is really geared for ab intellectual curious abthe type of history that doesnt put you to sleep. One of his more notable books hes won numerous awards for his books, among his more notable ones device and a history of wailing a New York Times bestseller and another quite notable book i read a couple years ago his last book before proceeding the furious sky was black lives, bluewater. A book about the history of pirates. That large history wasnt large enough so he was going to tackle hurricane history and i read this book and someone who grew up in florida and lives in florida abunfamiliar with hurricane history. The books that have been written on hurricane history have known for a long time, we been due for a good book on hurricane on hurricanes. Its a huge huge topic. Eric tackled it masterfully, despite it being so huge he was able to put in the book that you can actually hold in your hands. Its a lovely book. As i said. Im really looking forward to having this conversation with eric today. I want to start by asking eric, why did you decide to write this book on hurricanes . Why did you decide to undoubtedly abof some level to try to figure out how to bring this into something that was a manageable one. I long thought about writing a book about hurricanes but the problem was, i wanted to write about a particular hurricane and the two hurricanes i was most interested in where the galveston hurricane of 1900 and the great hurricane of 1938, which hit long island and new england where i happened to live. There was a problem there, both of those hurricanes have already had quite a few really good books written about them. So i put the idea aside, and went on to write abthen come the summer and fall of 2017, the Hurricane Season from hell. When we had hurricane harvey, irma and maria, like destroy different parts of the United States. Right after that season was over, somebody you know very well, bob wilde, my editor, your editor, got together with the head of sales at the time, bill roos and and they thought there should be a book on the history of americans hurricanes and the thought of me because a number of my books spanned the centuries and i seemed to have a particular talent for pulling together and synthesizing huge amounts of information into a readable narrative. They reached out to my literary agent and asked him if i would be interested in writing a book about hurricanes and he in turn reached out to me and i didnt immediately say yes because before i sign on to do a book i have to have a vision of what that book is going to look like. I didnt know a lot about hurricanes in the time that i mentioned so i went on for about a month and and a half and i read a ton of books, articles and primary accounts of hurricanes and on the whole book sort of came into view and i said, okay, i will write the book and put together the proposal and the rest is history. You said you had this vision of writing the book or what it would look like, as you are writing the book and when you came to completing it did you find yourself staring at Different Directions to make this book into what you wanted and something that would appeal to your reading audience . It stayed pretty much as i envisioned on the outset, partly because before i start the book or when i put together a book proposal has spent a lot of time making notes and outlining where i think the book is in ago. I wont sign a book contract until im reasonably confident that ive outlined the book the way i wanted to go. There were some surprises and stories that didnt make it in the book or other stories i discovered along the way but believe it or not, the general outline and the rough chapter outline, which i developed a little bit later, stayed fairly constant. Part of that is a function of my books tend to be chronological. Most often they march through history in a chronological fashion. Once you know the general lay of the land and you know its a big ticket stories are that you want to incorporate and what the big themes are its a matter of just putting flesh on the bones but there are always surprises when you write a book. At least for me. Thats because virtually everyone in my books except for one of them was on a topic i didnt know a huge amount about before i started working on it and i do that on purpose because i have to spend almost 2 years working on these books. I tend to get bored easily. If i dont pick a topic that is going to excite me every couple weeks or maybe every day, then its gonna be a problem and one of the best ways to do that is to pick a topic that im not an expert in. Because then im guaranteed to be surprised along the way and that surprise and excitement not only fuels my work on the book but im hoping that it translates to some extent to the written page. I think it does, at least in my opinion. Lets talk a little bit about the writing process itself. He talked about chapter outlines. abdo you find your outlines more loose . And how about research, do you complete your research before you sit down to write . Or are you researching along the way . Obviously you been writing books for a long time, we do Research Today very different than we did, not too many years ago. With archives across the country. Now archives abthe archives often just our study with the computer in front of us. You know what happened if it is involved over time you are involved in many levels. My first book for norton was this first wailing book. They did know me from adam, i wrote six or seven books before that but they werent large prices are major publishers. It was almost 100 pages long, very detailed outlined of the chapter. Since i stayed with norton for six books now, theyve gotten to know me they trust me more, my proposals have over time got shorter and shorter. The actual proposal for the hurricane book i think only weighed in at seven doublespaced pages. More like an essay of a what i thought the book was can be about. Behind that i had a rough idea of the chapters that i used for my purposes and so yes you have to have a map in order to get someplace but my map has become less and less detailed over time and id like to think that in part because ive gotten better at this process and i sort of know more quickly what are the things that i want to talk about in the book and what direction do i want a book to go in but you talk about researching. Its changed tremendously. When i was starting writing books in the late 1990s i would almost always have to go to very specialized libraries to get the information i needed and it was rarely digitized. Even some of these places didnt have good copy machines. I was taking a lot of hand notes, which is a real problem for me because i flunked handwriting in elementary school. I have very poor handwriting and i dont write fast. So using a typewriter was good back then or when computers came in and started using computers but what happened in the last 10 or 15 years its an entire seachange, so much as digitized, not only google books which allows you to access virtually any book written before 1923, almost any topic but a lot of the Major Research institutions around the country have spent a lot of money and time digitizing some of their key documents. With a few keystrokes i can quickly be overwhelmed with data. Just today im working on a new book on privateering in the American Revolution. I was doing research on it today. I was reading a book i think from 1850. That book mentioned a certain privateer. I got on google and put in the privateers name and one of his vessels and all the sudden six or seven other documents in the 1800s and early 1900s that talk about this privateer. I start to because they either a story. The big problem with this book was not a lack of information, the big problem was deciding what the huge amount of data that was available to me what do i use . If i were to make hundreds of decisions about what to leave out and what not to read. What were you looking for in the history of individual hurricanes that made the grade for the book. Was there particular criteria you wanted this to include . In order to include hurricane . Not sure it was criteria but what draws me the most i certainly right books in the manner i would like to read them. I love Human Interest stories. The stories go fastest they leave the deepest impression of me when its a story of people battling against the odds, dealing with adversity or just planning in the face of what is likely to come. I love the stories about the individuals that survive and didnt survive various hurricanes. I love the stories of the meteorologists and the politicians and the other people that got swept up into the story both good and bad. Because i think that people gravitate most easily to stories about other human beings being put in unique situations and hurricanes certainly fill that bill. I didnt spend as much time talking about administrative stuff and regulations and that kind of stuff, i really wanted to focus on the human side of the story. Thats what i liked about your book and some of the other hurricane books that have been written, they post on the administrative side or climatology and they leave out the Human Interest. Your book reminded me of whats Marjory Stoneman douglas original hurricane, it was a bridge and very much a Human Interest story and i love that book. When we think of Marjory Stoneman douglas we think of the everglades river of grasp. But the book of hurricanes is right up there with the rest of them. Certainly a book i needed to be updated which you clearly done. So what are some of the surprises that stand out in your mind that you want to share with us that kept you glued to the desk writing . One of the big surprises is how hurricanes have affected the course of American History, in your state alone i was fascinated to read about in the 1550s in the 1560s when the spanish were trying to settle florida and how the first settlement in pensacola was basically wiped out by hurricane and just think about how history mightve changed did that settlement survive. Also years later on the east coast of florida there was a Battle Royale between the french and the spanish who were both interested in colonizing florida and the french, which had a very formidable fleet was about ready to attack the spanish who had settled a little further to the south and what is now saint augustine, right at the moment when the french were getting ready to launch their attack a hurricane comes along and basically wiped out half the french fleet. Then the spanish kill most of the french stragglers that made it out of the water after the hurricane crashed their ships. I love those kind of stories because they create great whatifs. What if france had settled florida and not spain. How might the history of our country been different . Might there not have been a United States . That was just fascinating. There are other stories like that. Another thing that fascinated me. To step back, what i said before, since i didnt know a lot about hurricanes but i certainly didnt know a lot about meteorology, almost everything was a big surprise. The battles in the 1800s between amateur and professional meteorologists and how meteorology evolved and in particular how our understanding of hurricanes evolved was just fascinating to me. The role of cuba in early hurricane science and understanding and the role of father Benigno Bynes was fascinating. To hear that president mckinley said during the spanishamerican war when it started that he was more afraid of what hurricanes are going to do to American Forces than any military attacks that might occur in the spanish. Every single story in the book i was excited to read about them because they were telling me about new aspects of American History and the evolution of the Hurricane Hunter planes and how the first person decided, joseph butler, to fly into a hurricane when nobody had done it before. And how sputnik led to the ultimate creation of satellites and the creation of weather satellites and still have today with all of our technology all of our ability to watch a hurricane from inception to dissolution to understand how much uncertainty there still is computer models can only take you so far. Look at hurricane laura which really devastated parts of louisiana last week just look at what happened in the last few hours before it came ashore. If it had been 15 miles in either direction the story might have been quite different. The storm surge mightve actually reached 20 feet. There were still questions about where it was going to occur and what the ultimate impact was going to be. That again sort of relates to the notion of how hurricanes affect American History if just the vagaries of meteorological happenstance and fa hurricane had jogged 20 to 30 miles this direction versus that direction just think how different our history would be. Look at new orleans where the bookstore is. Hurricane katrina had a major effect on new orleans. But just imagine if instead of making landfall 30 miles to the east, it had given new orleans a direct hit. That might have been a very different story and, believe it or not, and even worse story than what came out of it. Wended hurricane forecasting really become decent for many many years of course the u. S. Weather service was hopelessly incompetent when it came to forecasting and tracking hurricanes. Is there a particular turning point in history one the u. S. Government, meteorologists really became expert and reliable . It really has to do with their ability to get eyes on the storm. With the advent of radio there is the opportunity for ships to send in reports to meteorologists on land, they could supplement that with information that was sent over telegraphs back in the early years and telephones later on. But really it started to change fundamentally in the 1940s and 50s one the Hurricane Hunter planes came online so when a hurricane got within a tank full of gas or a plane basically to go out into the atlantic or the caribbean and see where this hurricane was, see what it was doing, send instruments into the hurricane and then relay that information back to the meteorologists on land, their ability to track hurricanes was much improved. But with satellites of course it was a whole different ballgame. Now you can literally watch a hurricane develop, see has crept across the atlantic or up through the caribbean into the gulf coast. And never lose sight of it. Adding to that not only were we able to see that and get gather data but with sophisticated computerized weather prediction models we started to come online in the 1950s and have greatly improved since then then we have the added piece of the armor meant terry and for the meteorologists to take all the data that they are collecting in real time, add that to their historical understanding of hurricanes and hurricane tracks and give us much better idea of where this hurricane is going, how powerful its likely to be and, therefore, what kind of protections are what kind of steps we need to take to deal with it before it actually arrives. The ark of our understanding of hurricanes our meteorological understanding and ability to track them as they evolve and move across the globe is just night and day compared to what it was 50 years ago or 100 years ago certainly. We are fortunate that doesnt reduce the impact of the hurricanes, because one of the annoying things is that there is nothing we can do as human beings to avert their strike. All we can do is better plan and prepare and deal with the aftermath. In a narrative history such as yours and which you are dealing with the in Human Interest stories obviously sometimes there are heroic figures that span out, one of mine is nash roberts longtime weatherman there he never used technology he never used green screen. You know these guys sitting on the screen like this and always use the squeaky markers on a whiteboard. The forecasters you think of a hurricane save lives. One of the heroes actually had remnants today to stop hurricane laura came through really did a number on Cameron Parish. There to be dealing with that for many years. Not too long ago, 1957 hurricane audrey came roaring ashore in the end of june and basically leveled Cameron Parish but there is one individual i start the book out with doctor cecil clark, his wife sybil, he had a clinic in cameron and during the height of the hurricane he left his house and he left behind his wife, three of his youngest children, and they are made, to go into the clinic to help the patients who were there and anybody who might be coming in after the hurricane. He didnt make it to the clinics, his car got thrown off the road by water and he sheltered with the family, not too far from his home. He survived, he came out of the house the next morning and people crowded around him, they all knew him because hes a local doctor and they begged him to go to the Cameron Parish courthouse where many people who were injured needed to be tended to. He was torn because he had no idea what happened to his wife sybil and his three children and his made. He had no idea. Yet he decided because of his professional responsibility and the oath he took to his patients that he was going to go to the courthouse and tend to them and he did and it wasnt until many hours later, more than a day actually, that he found out that his wife had survived during the storm but his three youngest children and the made had been killed. He was given all sorts of awards and call the hero which he truly was but he brushed that all aside and said i was just doing what was asked of me, i was being responsible and i would expect other people to do the same. He certainly is one of the heroes who put the needs of others above the needs of himself. Another similarly placed hero was clara barton during the sea islands hurricanes of 1893 that just killed maybe as many 2000 to 3000 people. We didnt have a mechanism or machinery for helping people after hurricanes but she and her relatively new American Red Cross and some volunteers swept into the sea islands off georgia, south carolina, and helps those people during their time of greatest need, get up off the ground and start planning and being themselves for the future. Theres one other story that came out of the hurricane of 1983 ab1893 which i love is gone bar daysafter the hurrican went without sleep for almost 35 hours and in that span he saved nearly 20 mariners whose ships had floundered just offshore and brought them back to the lifesaving station. Then finally he got to take a nap at the end of that ordeal. He is another hero. I think there are many many heroes abin new orleans during Hurricane Katrina there were many people who came in to help out, one of the most interesting were the cajun navy, all those people with their boats around the louisiana came down to new orleans and they helped to save 10,000 people over the span of a week or two. I think in my eyes they are heroes as well. My dad used to always say, i dont know if its a saying he came up with, i dont know what philosopher or writer wrote it first, im sure it goes back hundreds if not thousands of years is that adversity introduces a man or woman to themselves. Basically in times of duress, like a hurricane, abbecause they been called upon. There was nobody else, it was them or something horrible is going to happen. A lot of people step up, a lot of people dont. One thing about absome 500 people lost their lives a hurricane we remember. Unless you are from louisiana in this country we suffer from something what i call hurricane amnesia. If you are not in agreement with me are we doing any better in remembering our hurricanes . Are we taking important lessons from hurricanes now that perhaps we havent in the history . And what might those lessons be . Thats a tough question. I have to say upfront that my book in the beginning of the book i talk about the forelegs of hurricane, the four stages. The coming of the hurricane, the striking of the hurricane, the immediate aftermath and long tail which is what do people do over years and decades to deal with the hurricane destruction. In that fourth element, which i dont talk about in the book that much, is all the lessons we can learn from hurricanes. I mention many of them in the epilogues but to answer more generally, yes i do think we are learning. I think inevitably because of the coverage of hurricanes and because of the vast amounts of money that are involved, during 2017 hurricane harvey, irma, maria, generated 265 billion worth of damage. Irma alone destroyed 50 of the orange crop in florida. When you are dealing with such massive dislocations, things that register on the economic Richter Scale of the entire country it sort of forces people to focus on it. I think there is a lot of good writing about what people can do to better prepare for hurricanes and i do believe that today compared to 50 years ago certainly people are much more familiar with the anatomy of a hurricane, how meteorologists give us information about them, they know where to go for information if a hurricane is heading toward their area, i believe many hurricane prone communities held good evacuation plans in place. They have Emergency Responder systems. Hopefully the interaction or the coordination between the local state regional and federal responders is Getting Better over time. I will add that it all depends on the vagaries of funding and Public Policy priorities. Fema, which has a checkered history to say the least, and certainly one of their worst hours is in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, their history has been governed to some extent, not completely, to some extent by the amount of funding that they get at the federal level. Also by the expertise of the people who work for fema, are they People Experts in from Emergency Preparedness and response or are they political appointees who are there for other reasons . I think there is plenty we can do to improve the situation, whether we actually do that, whether individuals or governments take the steps that are necessary is we have to wait to see. It costs money to hurricane proof your house. And there are very difficult decisions that have to be made, one of the most difficult i think it has to do with the fact that people still want to live on the coast, people are still moving to the coast. People are building right on the oceans edge. Often times in floodplains or areas likely to get walloped by hurricanes. Unless we have better planning and zoning, thats gonna be a continuing refrain well into the future. We live in an era we are starting to see refugees moving from coastal areas. I live in gainesville florida, which is in the center of the state, we become something of a climate refugee city. More and more people are leaving the coast and coming to gainesville. Because they feel safer there, less congestion, they feel more so out of harms way. Are we going to start seeing more hurricane refugees . Is that happening already . Yes. Definitely, look at hurricane andrew. It ripped a 30 mile wide swath of destruction through miamidade county. Almost 200,000 homes were destroyed. Many people, about 100,000 people lost their jobs because of their place of business, thats about the same number about 100,000 people, and the month after the hurricane. I think its inevitable, the where of you have major hurricane strike theres going to be people decide they have to leave because they have to get out of the way before the next one comes along, i would argue when it comes to coastal living there such a strong draw and magnet for that there is going to be out flow of people who have been impacted but then in the subsequent years people will slowly come back. Here in marblehead where i live on the coast dont get walloped by too many hurricanes but we get ready severe noreaster is that do a number on a lot of houses along the coast. Yet people love living right on the oceans edge and peoples whose houses have been either destroyed or just damaged often say, stay, rebuild, and pray they are not going to get struck again. I think its almost inevitable with population expansion and the allure of living in a coastal area that we are going to continue to have development but in a place like miamidade and parts of florida they have some of the best building codes in the country when it comes to hurricanes. Book in 1991, my wife was working for the state of massachusetts, she was my fiance at the time. She had to go down and check the damage. On cape cod. So i went along with her. And she snapped to this shot of me standing next to height summer cottage that was leveled by the storm surge and the wind. Undertake a look at the picture, please notice the hawaiian shirt i am wearing. It was one of my favorite shirts at the time. My soontobe wife hated it. Right after we got married she got rid of that hawaiian shirt and my suede vest. And i still miss both of them. Civic im rooting for that. If its the end of the color section, look the color insert. [inaudible] you got a hold it up a little bit. Yeah, that is me. My hair was brown. While you have here. [laughter] tune me in if you will of sharing questions in the chat room. That you might have. We have plenty of time for our questions from you. Want to talk about the expressions very common when youre talking about hurricanes with a National Disaster. Natural disasters, does it blame nature. Its to blame for the human consequences of hurricanes. While they are both Natural Disasters and man made disasters, they are Natural Disasters in nature of getting worse because of human intervention in the area of Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases going into the atmosphere. The evidence is mounting that future hurricanes and a warmer world are going to be worse than the past. But as we get into more modern era, certain of the last 50 or 60 years. A lot of it is a human made disaster. Get poorly built houses that are built too close to the coast. If people do not evacuate in a timely manner they treat a whole bunch of problems not for their own personal safety but for the safety of the people going there and rescue them. So the entire framework that we created as human beings that gets walloped by these hurricanes depending on how we created the framework and what Development Looks Like and what steps we have taken to prepare for the hurricane until the aftermath. That is how it becomes a human made disaster. Katrina is a perfect example. The levees they breached in almost 50 different places. They were poorly built and a lot of Development Decisions that led up to the catastrophe that was katrina. Not the least of it was Development Decisions that destroyed thousands of square miles of coastal marshland. Which act as a natural break or absorbent for the storm surges. Their bad decisions made about the destruction of the levees. You go back in time even furthe further, she can read about hurricanes in the early 1800s which destroyed levees that were even at that time in place in parts of new orleans. I love new orleans. Ive only been there once ive read a lot about their history and im not arguing to get rid of, not by a longshot. Its kind of a strange place its a softer undersea water in a coastal region. And it was very disturbing at the end of the book when im finishing up the research to discover that the army corps of engineers after spending tens of billions of dollars in the wake of katrina to shore up a levee system, to build on the largest pumps in the universe. Im basically to protect new orleans or another category three hurricane. We learned that because of subsidence and some of the construction decisions that were made, that new levee system does vary is not going to for the level of protection that it was built. So now that got to make some hard decisions about what to do in the future. Whether to invest more money to make sure new orleans is adequately protected. Its a Natural Disaster you cannot get rid of a natural component. It is compounded by the decisions we make at every leve level. Id like to say the army corps of engineers should not be allowed to make build anything longer than a bridge. They have many successes. [laughter] lack of a another chapter in the discussion. You use the word walloped. There are so many ways you can describe a hurricane on landfall and coming in. Theres a big blow, did you make a list of verbs and adjectives but so you werent simply repeating things we were talking about . Mckay did not have a list but i had to do that. In fact my editor, this is mari marie, choosing the editing on it. She warned me against that. She said yeah, dont use the terrible use of devastating and use different words. I was conscious of that was writing it. Why didnt have a list right used. [inaudible] i did search online. Remember distinctly going to the entire book many times right before and after i handed it in. And did searches on similar words. The impact of a hurricane appeared too many times, did not have an exact number for that but if you read it to me times is it oh, i gotta go back after back and change these for the stuff only a consideration. When you talk about different hurricanes, those different elements at all the same. There is devastation. How you talk about that . So related to that, i was very happy some early reviewers of the book say that built litany of hurricane after hurricane. Each hurricane had its own personality. Expertly found that that to be the case for. That in turn made it easier for me to it describe the hurricane in a way that would not become too repetitive and boring basically. And can only say slams so me times, right . Switch it right. Doing writing about the bald eagle now, the word that comes to everybodys mind is majestic. Bald eagle is the word i refuse the popularity of that word. And so we are we are constantly searching for words to change up our language. By think one of the successes of your book is not a long list of hurricanes for each hurricane is a story in and of itself. Its also part of a universal story as well. Its great to see the reviewers are recognizing may successes as a writer. Of your audience. So we have a question. So the question is from one of our, what do you call . During the research what was the most surprising thing, you came across. Then i have a second question was a most surprising thing about hurricanes you came acros across . To be to a sort of already answered that before but let me add one more thing of hurricanes in American History. I love the American Revolution, i love reading about the American Revolution. Absolutely no idea about the massive hurricanes that swept in the caribbean heard two of them killed a total of 20000 people. He also destroyed quite a few british ships. They have that as a staging area farther to the north in the colonies. And also to protect their colonial possessions. What was absolutely fastening to me was a french elite that did not want to stay in the caribbean for the next Hurricane Season. They were allies to the colonies and had long resistance helping them in a major naval battle. Finally said her going up the summer of 1771. Everyone knows what happens grade the French League left the caribbean to get out of the way the hurricane. And to help their allies. And help turn the tide of the battle of yorktown. Which ended when wallace surrendered to George Washington in 1781. Thousand major turning point in the American Revolution. He has the beginning of the peak negotiations. I just thought that was fascinating to learn about it an element of the American Revolution. That i knew nothing about. Typically we read about that at the American Revolution, through the course of that is if theyve ever mentioned. You have described a major arrangement and whether. One other way to look at it is the weather is, at the major reactor. Look at each individual hurricane, not just once i talked about in the book. They have a massive impact on that regions local history. However, that impact of rippled well beyond the area of landfal landfall. They could go back and gather data on all of the hurricanes of the modern era since the late 1800s and look at the reverberation of each of those hurricanes. Not just with in a community, a region or a state. But for the broader economy. I think hurricanes are probably be seen more clearly is a major deterrence in the economic history. Also as a determinant and other things that happened or didnt happen. Not just when im going to do. See what i have another question for can you tell us a little bit about the history of naming hurricanes . Guest naming hurricanes. This is the part i enjoyed writing the bowsprit basic in the1800s early 1900s, meteorologists and australia started naming cyclones to hurricanes by another name after beautiful tahitian women. Maidens his effort got squash for a variety of reasons. Any fast fortune 1941 when a novelist wrote a book called storm. Clint was eight national bestseller. In that bucket talked about a storm across the pacific wasnt a hurricane. That storm and other storms after women. He named the store mariah. That book got sent to gis and sailors during world war ii. Thats part of the reason the name in the army started unofficially naming typhoons which are just hurricanes by another name after women. In the early 1950s, the Weather Bureau, the predecessor to the National WeatherService Started naming hurricanes after the army phonetic alphabet. But there is some confusion because theres another phonetic alphabet that was suggested prayed so in 1956, the Letter Service finally decided to name hurricanes after women. They definitely got that idea from what was happening in the Pacific Theater in world war ii. There were a lot of protests. One woman said she would much rather have a hurricane common unnamed hurricane hit her house then one named after of her husbands former girlfriends. But the protest died down. That wasnt till the late 1960s when roxie bolton spoke up. Vice president and the National Organization of women. She says its really horrible to associate women with these dramatic and devastating me at meteorology color event. She got annoyed reading all the News Coverage about vicious, treacherous, mild, horrific female named hurricanes coming up the coast. So she lobbied the National Weather service to change their naming system. She did not get much traction until jimmy carter came into office and he appointed the first female secretary of commerce who is a selfdescribed feminist. And bonita agreed with roxie bolton. She used a considerable shaper unchecked pressure of the to get the world meteorology goal association to start naming hurricanes on alternating basis after men and women. That is how we come up with the annual list of 21 names alternating between men and women. I just love that story. But talk about surprises, i knew nothing about that story. Think its just a fascinating place of the Womens Movement and meteorology interests. We have a comment in the chat that says bolton , yay. [laughter] can you tell us a little bit about. [inaudible] paced back it is a jesuit priest who took over the observatory in cuba in mid to late, later 1800 1800s. And he was wellversed in the history of meteorology, he was fascinated by it. He decided to make the observatory a major leader in forecasting hurricanes and monitoring the weather in the caribbean. So he went back over all of the records organize them, he bought some barometers and other web weather measurement machines. And he started tracking the weather on cuba on a daily basi basis. Sometimes as many as ten times a day he would write down his observation pretty also had a network of people working throughout the caribbean to provide him with information. And through this, he slowly came to create sort of a shorthand understanding of hurricanes. The brick red skies in the morning and the lowering barometric pressure and the high clouds he basically became a very good forecaster of hurricanes. He was not always right. He was right more than it would allow. The sad part of the story is after he dies, people he put in place continued their observations. But right before the United States basically cut off the connection between the Weather Bureau and the blend observator observatory. So they did not benefit from their observations right before the hurricane came in and clobbered galveston. If they had paid more attention to the expertise of the cubans, maybe there wouldve been a better evacuation. Maybe the death toll would not have risen so high to make it the worse National Disaster in American History with the least 6000 dead. And his name as ten or 12000. It was a sign of the times. A lot of americans are quite condescending in their view of the counterparts in the caribbean. And unfortunately i think we suffered because of that. So it was mainly american that severed that relationship . The arrogance who ran the Weather Bureau. He wanted everything weather related to come from washington headquarters. I need definitely had a less than favorable view of the cubans who he felt were too often easily alarmed and slapped the title or the designation hurricane on too many storms. In one of the things willis wanted to do was try to avoid panicking americans about oncoming threats. But sometimes panic is necessary to get people to take the action that they should be taking. Yes. So, weve been talking for an hour now. Its been a great time for me and im sure others. But before we go could you tells a little bit about your next book . And when you expect to, but this going to be two years . Another twoyear project . A little sneak peak if you will pursue. This is sort of related to my prior book because a lot of called privateer which gets licenses from governments during times of war to attack the enemy shipping. A lot of people called in licensed pirates. One of the things my book strongly argues that is not a good designation. Privateers during the American Revolution played a very important role. Not only within the colonies but also with respect to providing goods and giving outlet to all the sailors who have been put out of work because of the onset of the American Revolution. I also explained the role of the outcome of the American Revolution. I think far too often histories of that were discount or disparage the role of privateer privateers. And i am hoping to write a history for a place of honor that they truly deserve. Along with George Washington on congress and our founding fathers. They arent integral part of the story that is too often overlooked. Im working on it right now. You asked before how can my research project, tend to do the research before write it. Im just about done during most of the research for this book. I expect in the very near future to begin writing it. I will hand it in about 18 months, 20, 22 months after i signed the contract. It will come out i guess not sure what they are after. It will come out not long after book on eagles. Will this be important because well . Yes. [inaudible] so after writing this big book on hurricanes. In writing your new book on privateering, you have a whole new perspective of hurricanes and their role in privateering date may not have enough writte written . Given the easiness you ask that question the answer is yes. But the answer is no. I dont think hurricanes are going to make an appearance in the privateering book. At least not yet. Really . Civic okay. There are some good storms in there but there hurricanes. Okay. Human storms as well as natural storms. Yes yes. So,. [inaudible] back to wonderful conversation what to think you all, its very enlightening i cannot wait to get more into the book. On for my people will have signed copies of the furious guy. If you like to order get in touch with the bookstore. And eric, congratulations. Much luck in the future. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks jack . Sumi n. [laughter] okay take care. Alright provide. Strict book tv on cspan2 has topped nonfiction books and authors. Every weekend tonight at 9 15 p. M. Eastern donald trump junior on his book, liberal privilege. And 11 the virginia dynasty former second Lady Lynne Cheney chronicles the leadership of four of the first five president s of virginia. George washington, thomas jefferson, james mattis and even james monroe. And on sunday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words, former cia director john brennan speaks about his life and career in his book undaunted, i fight against americas enemies at home and abroad. He is interviewed by airtime security reporter julian barnes. Watch book tv, this weekend on cspan2. So back on her weekly Author Interview program after words former fbi Deputy Assistant director counterintelligence, describes his work on the muller investigation. Here is a portion. Civic i think that my historical record and those who have looked at it speaks for themselves but part of what i lay out of the cases are work the outcomes of those very plainly there. Able to be cooperated. The places to look to verify them as all of these independent looks at have been done to Inspector General investigation investigations. Over three years, 15 or more analysts looking at every last thing i did put every text, every email every call every note every communication. All of which have concluded that not only me but the entire team is not any acting taking on improper motive could we add on top of that mostly u. S. Attorneys that the department of justice has assigned to take a look at her actions after the fact. You look at all the congressional act tried to spin. Not to mention all of the media for you and other folks looking at we did, all of these things no evidence things are done based on their considerations. He cannot make it to a press commerce or a town hall without Fact Checking at each event pointing out the numerous lies things that he says that are not true. It occurs time and time and time again. And those who catalogue literally thousands of untruths he has uttered. When i look at the targeting of us, not only me but others in the fbi with this crazy conspiracy is apparent to me what is being done by partisans. Its being done specifically to undermine any sort of valid criticism or observation of trump because he is scared of whats there pretty does not want the truth known. And anybody again, not just the fbi but people colonel vindman, anyone who dares to speak the truth is immediately attacked because they dont with the truth out pursuant to watch the rest of this Program Visit our website booktv. Org. Click on the after words tap or search for peter strzok using the box of the top of the page. Speed high everyone im allison cutting the artistic director of the chicago humanities festival and delighted to be here welcoming you to todays