Everybody in lake charles, we were saying, probably have many weeks if not months of no power, trouble with the water system and even people as far north as shreveport and monroe, still without power. We are here today with jack davis in conversation, a professor of history so specializing in environmental history and sustainability and the author of Pulitzer Prize winning the gulf the making of an american city. New york times book review calls this book a beautiful homage to a neglected in addition to the Pulitzer Prize, notable book for 2017, made several other lists including the Washington Post and npr and forbes. Welcome. A pleasure to have you with us today. I turn the floor to jack and derek and have a conversation. One final thing, people have questions they can write in the chat room and get to the question if not during the talk, at the very end. And encourage people who have signed copies at the bookshop and go to our website, www. Districtbookshop. Com. Give us a call anywhere in the country and anywhere in the world. Turn it over to jack and eric. We will start with me introducing eric. You are familiar with erics work, prolific author of 14 books, nonfiction writer specializing in writing history that is geared for the intellectually curious audience. A good narrative writer, outstanding narratives writer, the type of history that doesnt put you to sleep. He has won numerous awards. Among his more notable ones are leviathan, history of whaling which was a New York Times bestseller, another notable book that i read a couple years ago, last book before proceeding, black lives. Water, book about the history of pirates. That large history wasnt large enough, he was going to tackle hurricane history and i read this book before it came out. Someone who grew up in florida and lived in florida and is familiar with hurricane history and the books written on hurricane history. We have been due for a good book on hurricanes. It is a huge topic. Eric tackled it masterfully despite this topic being so that you can hold in your hand and it is a lovely book as i said so im looking forward to having this conversation with eric today. I want to start by asking eric why did you decide to write this book, to take on this big topic and try to figure out and bring it into something manageable . I had long thought about writing a book about hurricanes but the problem was i wanted to write about a particular hurricane. The hurricanes i was most interested in were the galveston hurricane of 1900 and the great hurricane of 1938 which hit long island where i happened to live but both of those hurricanes already had quite a few really good books written about them. I went on to write black flags bluewater, then came the summer and fall of 2017, the Hurricane Season from hell when we had hurricane harvey, irma, and maria destroy different parts of the United States so right after that season was over somebody you know very well, my editor, your editor, bob while at norton got together with the head of sales of the time, they thought there should be a book on the history of american hurricanes and they immediately thought of me because my book spend centuries and i have a particular talent for pulling together huge amount of information into a readable narrative, they reached out to my literary agent and asked him if i would be interested in writing about hurricanes and i didnt immediately say yes. Before i sign onto a book i need a vision what it will look like. I didnt know a lot about hurricanes other than the two i mentioned so i went for a month and a half and i read a ton of books and articles and primary accounts of hurricanes and the book came into view and i said i would write the book and the rest is history. You said you had this vision of writing the book. As you were writing the book, came, the vision remains the same or did you find yourself staring in Different Directions to make this book into what you wanted that would appeal to your reading audience. It stays as i envisioned, before i start a book, i spend a lot of time making notes of where the book is going to go, i am reasonably confident, that i discovered along the way. The general outline and rough chapter outline stayed fairly constant. Both of these tend to be chronological. You know the general lay of the land, we are putting flash on the bone. One of them was on a topic that i didnt know a huge amount about and i do that on purpose because i have to spend two years working on these books. I get bored easily, if i dont pick a topic that is going to excite me every couple weeks or every day, one of the best ways to do that is pick a topic im not an expert in, guaranteed to be surprised along the way, the surprise and excitement fuels my work on the book but im hoping it translates to some extent to the written page. In my opinion, lets talk about the writing process, talk about chapter outline, you talk about sticking to those or are your outlines, and researching along the way. You are writing books for a long time, very different from the way you did. And just our study, with a computer in front of us. It evolves over time on many levels. They didnt know me from adam. Major publishers the proposal for my whaling book was 100 pages long, very detailed outline and what happened for six books now, they got to know me and trust me more but my proposals have gotten shorter and shorter. My proposal for the hurricane book only weighed in at 17 doublespaced pages. It was an essay of what i thought the book would be about but i had a rough idea of the chapters i use for my purposes. You have to have math to get someplace but my map has become less detailed over time. I have gotten better at this process, and what are the things to talk about and what direction to go on. It has changed tremendously. From late 1990s, i would have to go to a Specialized Library to get the information i needed and it was really digitized and some didnt have free copy machines. I was taking a lot of hand notes, i flunked hand writing in elementary school. I had very poor handwriting and i dont write fast. Using a typewriter was good back then. In the past 10 or 15 years, an entire seachange, so much to digitize, accessing virtually any book written before 1923 on any topic but the Major Research institutions around the money expect a lot of money and time digitizing their key documents. With a few keystrokes i can be overwhelmed with data. I was doing research on it today and from 1850, that book mentioned a certain privateer. I got on google, put it in the privateers name and had 6 or 7 other documents from the 1800s to 1900s talking about this privateer and put together a story. The history of individual hurricane that made the grade for the book. Was there particular criteria you wanted in order to include a hurricane . What draws me the most and i write book in the manner i would like to read them. I dont want them to be i love Human Interest stories. The stories will fastest, they leave the deepest impression with 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. So i love the stories about the individuals that survive and didnt survive various hurricanes. I love the stories of the urologist, the politicians and the other people got swept up into the story, both good and bad. People gravitate most easily to stories about of the human beings being put in unique situations, and hurricanes fill that bill. I didnt spend as much time talking about administrative stuff and regulations and that kind of stuff. I wanted to focus on the human side of the story. Thats what i like about your book and some of the other hurricane books at a been written do that. They focus on the administrative side or climatology and and ine about the Human Interest story. Your book reminded me was Marjory Stoneman douglas original hurricane, it was a bridge and very impressive, Human Interest story. I love that book. When we think of Marjory Stoneman douglas we think of the everglades. But i think her book on hurricanes is right up there wh the rest of them. Certainly about that needed to be updated which you have clearly done. What are some of the surprises that stand it in your mind you might share 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 and i was fascinated to read about in the 15 50s and the 1560s when the spanish were trying to settle florida and now the first settlement in pensacola was basically wiped out by hurricane. Hurricane. Just think about our history mightve changed if the settlement survived. Also years later on these coast of florida that was a Battle Royale between the frank and the spanish for both interested in colonizing florida. The french would add a very formidable fleet was about ready to attack the spanish who lets settle a little further to the south in what is now st. Augustine. But right at the moment when the french were getting ready to launch their attack, a hurricane comes along and basically wiped out half of the french fleet, and then the spanish to 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 what is. What if france had settled florida and that spain . How might the history of our country then different . Might do 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, said knight since i did know a lot about hurricanes i did know a lot about meteorology. Almost everything was a big surprise but the battles in the 1800s between amateur and professional meteorologists and how meteorology evolved and in particular our understanding of hurricanes evolve was just fascinating to me. The role of cuba in early hurricane signed and understanding of the role of father benito bynes was fascinating. To hear that president mckinley said during the spanishamerican war when it started that he was more afraid of what hurricanes were 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 aspects of American History and the evolution of the Hurricane Hunter claims and now the first person to cite planes firstperson count sputnik led to the old 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 might have actually reached 20 feet. It was up until the last moment when landfall the card they were still questions about where it was going to occur and what the ultimate impact was going to be. That again relates to the notion about hurricanes affect American History, if just for the vagaries of meteorological happenstance and if they hurricane had jogged 20, 30 miles this direction versus that direction, just think a different history would be. Look at new orleans with the bookstore is. Hurricane katrina had a major impact 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 mightve been a very different story and believe it or not, and even worse story than what came out of it. So when did hurricane forecasting really become decent . For many, many years of course the u. S. Weather surface was hopelessly incompetent when it came to forecasting and tracking hurricanes. Is there a particular 20point in history when u. S. Government and meteorologists really became expert and reliable . It has do with her ability to keep eyes on the store and pick with the of radio that was 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. Really it started to change fundamentally in the 1940s and 50s when the Hurricane Hunter planes came online. So when hurricane within a tank full of gas for 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 hurricanes and relay that information back to the meteorologists on land, their ability to track the hurricanes was much improved. But with satellites it was a whole different ballgame. Now you can literally watching hurricane developed, see if it is crept its way across the atlantic or into the gulf coast and never lose sight of it. No longer can we be completely surprised by hurricanes. And adding to that not only were we able to see that and gather data on them, 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 armamentarium from the meteorologists to take all the data center collecting in real time, add that to their historical understanding of hurricanes and hurricane tracks and give us a much better idea of where this hurricane is going, how powerful it is likely to be and, therefore, what kind of protections or what kind of steps we need to take to do with it before it arrives. So the art of our understanding of hurricanes, are meteorological understanding and our ability to track them as they evolve and move across the globe is just night and day compared to what it was just 50 years ago or 100 years ago certainly. We are fortunate, that doesnt reduce the impact of hurricanes because one of the annoying things is that theres nothing we can do as human beings to avert their strike. All he can do is better plan and prepare and deal with the aftermath. In a narrative history such as yours in which you are dealing with the Human Interest stories, obviously sometimes there are heroic figures that stand out. One of mine, your family with is nash robert in new orleans, the longtime weatherman who come nobody could out call him on hurricanes and he didnt trust the u. S. Weather service. He never used technology. He never used a green screen. These guys sitting in front of the screen like this, and always used the squeaking marker on a whiteboard. Who are some of your heroes, whether forecasters who save lives . One of the heroes actually has resonance today. Hurricane laura came through really did a number on Cameron Parish. Theyre going to be dealing with that for many years. Not too long ago, 1957, hurricane audrey came roaring ashore at the end of june and basically leveled Cameron Parish, but the one individual i start the book out with, doctor cecil clarke, his wife sybil turkey at a clinic in cameron, and during the height of the hurricane he left his house and you left behind his wife, three of his youngest children and their 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 clinic. 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 he was 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 and his three children and is made. Yet no idea. Yet he decided because of his professional responsibility and the oath that he took to his patients that is 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 maid had been killed. He was given all sorts of awards and called a hero, which he truly was come 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 of the to do the same. But he is certainly one of the heroes who put the needs of others about the needs of himself. Another similarly placed here was clara barton during the acas and hurricane of 1893 that just killed maybe as many as 3000 people. We didnt have a mechanism or machinery for helping people after hurricanes, but she and her relatively new American Red Cross and volunteer swept into the sea islands off georgia, south carolina, and she help those people during the time of greatest need come get up off the ground and start planning and feeding themselves for the future. Theres one other story that came out of the hurricane of 1893 which i love, its about dunbar davis he was a lifesaver in oak island North Carolina the lifesaving station. After the hurricane he basically went without sleep for almost 35 hours, and in that span he saved nearly 20 mariners who ships had floundered just offshore and brought them back to the lifesaving station. And then finally he got to take a nap at the end of that ordeal but hes another here. There are many, many heroes. You in new orleans remember probably during Hurricane Katrina to were many people who came in to help out. One of the most interesting with the cajun navy, all those people with their votes from around louisiana came down to new orleans and the help 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 what philosopher or writer wrote his first but im sure it goes back hundreds if not thousands of years, is that adversity introduces a man or a woman to themselves. Basically in times of duress like a hurricane, there are often heroic people who do heroic deeds because they havent 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 hurricane audrey in 1957 is some 500 people lost their lives and its a hurricane we remember, unless youre from louisiana people still remember audrey that in this country we suffer from something of what i call hurricane amnesia. If youre not in agreement with me, are we doing any better in remembering our hurricanes . Are we taking important lessons away from hurricanes now that perhaps we havent in the history next and what might those lessons be . Thats a tough question. I have to say up front that my book didnt come in the beginning of the book i talk about the four lakes of a a hurricane or the four stages. The coming of the hurricane, the striking of the hurricane, the immediate aftermath, and the 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 epilogue, i to answer more generally, yes i do think were learning. I think because of her coverage of hurricanes and the vast amounts of money that are involved, during 2017 hurricanes harvey, irma and maria generated 265 billion worth of damage. Irma alone destroyed 50 of the orange crop in florida. When youre dealing with such massive dislocations, things that register on the economic Richter Scale of the entire country, it forces people to focus on it and i think theres lot of good writing about what people can do to better prepare for hurricanes, and i do believe today compared to 50 years ago 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 have 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. But i will add it all depends on the vagaries of funding and Public Policy priorities. So fema which has a checkered history to say the least, and certainly one of the 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. And also by the expertise of people who work for fema. Are they people are expert in Emergency Preparedness and response, or are they political appointees who are there for other reasons . Theres plenty we can do to improve the situation, whether we actually do that, whether individuals or governments take the steps necessary, we have to wait to see in many areas because it cost money. To hurricane proof your house. There are difficult decisions that have to be made. One of the most difficult has to do with the fact people still want to live on the coast. People are still moving to the coast. People are building light on the oceans edge, oftentimes in floodplains or in areas are likely to get walloped by hurricane. Unless theyre better playing and zoning, thats going to be a continuing refrain well into the future. So we live in an era where we are starting to see Climate Change refugees moving away from coastal areas. I live in gainesville, florida, which is in the center of the state and we become something of a climate refugee city, more and more people are living the coast and coming again still because they feel safer there, its less congestion. They feel more out of harms way. Are we going to start seeing more hurricane refugees, or is that happening already . Yeah, definitely. Look at hurricane andrew. It ripped a 30mile wide swath of destruction through Miamidade County. Almost 200,000 homes were destroyed. Many people, about 100,000 people, lost their jobs because their place of business was just demolished. Coincidentally, thats the same number, about 100,000 people, left Miamidade County in the months after the hurricane. Its inevitable, wherever you have a major hurricane strike there are going to be people who decide to have to leave because they want to get out of the way before the next one comes along. I would argue when it comes to coastal living there is such a strong draw and a magnet for it that theres going to be outflow, people have been impacted, but then in the subsequent years people are going to slowly come back. You see that time and again. I know here in marblehead were of it which is right on the coast we dont get walloped by too many hurricanes but we get pretty severe noreaster is that to a number on a lot of houses along the coast, yet people of living right on the oceans edge. And peoples houses have been either destroyed or just damaged often stay, rebuild, hopefully a little better than before, and pray that theyre not going to get struck again. Its almost inevitable with population expansion and the lower of living in a coastal area a lure that we will continue to have development. But in a place like miamidade and in parts of florida. Some of the best building codes in the country when it comes to hurricanes. If you build smarter and better you can avoid some of the problems of the past. Why do we talk about northern hurricanes . We think of florida, we thinkf the gulf coast, we think of the american south, southeast. Sandy was obviously a pivotal hurricane in the north. It turned eyes towards building codes up north, and are there hurricanes in the north that were pivotal in the way sandy was, or just as memorable . Absolutely. In florida you get 40 of hurricane strikes. Louisiana is right up there as a south carolina, North Carolina and texas. Us northerners often dont think about hurricanes nearly as much as you do for good reason because new england only gets smacked with a hurricane about five or ten times a century. But weve had some doozies took the biggest is the hurricane of 1938 which slammed into the eastern end of long island and then plowed into new england causing the most damage in rhode island. It ended up killing 680 people, about 500 million worth of damage, 1938. And it still to this day is the single worst Natural Disaster in new england history. And if you see anybody whos over 90 years old or 85, they remember that hurricane. If you speak to many younger people who grew up here, they heard about that hurricane extensively while they were growing up. Hurricane sandy had a major impact on new jersey and more importantly new york, but also the outer ends, ages of Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of damage up here in new england. After all, the hurricane was almost 1000 miles wide. In the mid1950s there was an outbreak of hurricanes that affected new england, hurricane carol, edna, hazel and diane. People around here remember those. Hurricane bob, theres a funny picture in the book of meat in 1991. My wife was working for the state of massachusetts. She was my fiance at the time and she had to go down and check the damage on cape cod. I went along with her, and she snapped a shot of me standing next to a summer cottage that was leveled by the storm surge and the wind. If you get to take a look at the picture, please notice the hawaiian shirt im 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. I still missed both of them. [laughing] im looking for that picture now. Its at the end of the color section. Look at the color insert at the end. Here we go. [laughing] oh. Europe to hold it up a little bit. [laughing] you have to hold it up a little bit. Thats me, when my hair was brown. When you had hair. [laughing] those who have tuned in, if you will, please share any questions in the chat room that you might have. We have plenty of time for questions from you. I want to talk about the expression, very, when talking about hurricanes, and thats Natural Disaster. Are these truly Natural Disasters . Doesnt Natural Disaster blame nature . Gets blamed for the human consequences of hurricanes. They are both Natural Disasters and manmade disasters, human made disaster. The Natural Disasters of course in a sense its nature that is creating the hurricanes. They are 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 those of the past. As we get into more modern era, certainly in the last 50, 60 years, a lot of it is a human made disaster as if you poorly built houses that are built too close to the coast, if people dont evacuate in a timely manner and they create a whole bunch of problems that only to their own personal safety but to the safety of the people have to go in there and rescue them, so the entire framework we have created as human beings that gets walloped by these hurricanes, depending on how we created that framework and what Development Looks Like and what steps we have taken to prepare for the hurricane and deal with this aftermath, thats how it becomes a human made disaster. Katrina is a perfect example. The levees, they breached an almost 50 different places. They were poorly built and will not have Development Decisions that led up to the catastrophe that was katrina. Not the least of which was Development Decisions that destroyed thousands of square miles of coastal marshland which act as a natural breaker, absorbent for the storm surges from hurricanes. There were bad decisions made about the construction of the levees picky to go back in time even further you can read about hurricanes in the early 1800s which destroyed levees that were even at that time in place around parts of new orleans here i love new orleans. Ive only been there once. Ive read a lot about their history and take this the right way, im not arguing to get rid of new orleans, not by a long shot, but its kind of a strange place to build a city. You are basically a big saucer that is under sea level in the coastal region. It was very disturbing at the end of the book when i was 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 one of the largest pumps and universe, and basically to help protect new orleans from another category three hurricane, lo and behold we learned that because of subsidence and some of the construction decisions that were made, that new levee system which is very new is not going to afford even the level of protection that it was built. Now this got to make some hard decisions about what to do in the future and whether to invest more money to make sure that new orleans is adequately protected. So its both a Natural Disaster, you cant get rid of the natural component but it is compounded by decisions that we make at every level. I like to say the army corps of engineers should not be allowed to do anything larger than a bridge. They have many successes and they have many failures as well. That could be another chapter and discussion. Use the word walloped. I mean, there are so many ways you can describe a hurricane on landfall and coming in. Theres the big below. Did you make a list of verbs and adjectives so you were not simply repeating when you talk about one . I didnt have a list but i had to do that. In fact, my editor, this is marie, she was doing the editing on it and she warned wanted met that. She goes yeah, dont use that terrible, dangerous, devastating. You have to use different words. I was conscious about what i was writing. While i didnt have the list, i did use my roget is your source and i did Search Online and i did come member distinctly going to the entire book many times right before and after i handed it in and doing searches on specific words. If the word described hurricane or an impact of hurricane appear too many times, and it didnt have an exact number but i got a sense is that appear to me times, i have got to go back and strategically change of these. That was definitely a consideration because when you talk about different hurricanes, there are some elements of the hurricane that are the same and there is devastation. How do you talk about that . So related to that was i was very happy to hear some early reviewers of the book say that the book was not just a litany of hurricane after hurricane with the same story but each hurricane had its own personality. I i found that to be the case ad that in turn made it easier for me to describe the hurricanes in a way that wouldnt become too repetitive and boring, basicall basically. You can only say slams so many times, right . Writing about the bald eagle now and, of course, the word that comes everybodys mind is majestic. Right. Its a word i refuse, in fact, i write about the popular of the word but it is a word i refused to describe the bald eagle. We are constantly searching for words to change up our language. I think one of the successes of your book is not its this laundry list of hurricanes come that each hurricane is a story in itself but its also part of universal story as well. Its great to see the reviewers are recognizing that your success as a writer and also your awareness of your audience. So we have a question, and so the question is from one of our what do you call during the research what was the most surprising thing i think you touched on this, when you came across, then have a second question. What was the most surprising thing about hurricanes that you came across . I sort of already answered that before so let me add one more thing. This has to do with the impact of hurricanes on American History. I love the American Revolution. I love reading about the American Revolution and i had no idea about the massive hurricanes that swept into the caribbean in 1780, and to my cousin killed a total of 20,000 people but they also destroyed quite a few british and french ships because they use the area as a staging area for the battles farther to the north in the colonies and also to protect their colonial possessions. What was absolutely fascinating to me was the french fleet decided they didnt want to stay in the caribbean for the next Hurricane Season, and their allies to the colonies and the long resisted helping them in the major naval battle. But finally they said okay, were going to go up in the summer of 1771, and edwin knows what happened. They left caribbean to get out of the way of hurricane and to help their allies, and helped turn the tide at the battle of yorktown which ended when lord cornwallis surrendered to George Washington on october 19, 1781, which was a major turning major turning point in the American Revolution. It was not the end of the American Revolution by a long shot but it helped to grease the skids for the beginning of the peace negotiations. I just thought that was a great, just fascinating to me to learn about that come an element of the American Revolution that i knew nothing about. Typically when we read about that, the American Revolution, rarely if ever mentioned. You have described a major historical agent in the weather. One of the way to look at it is that the weather is, as you said, a major historical actor. But if you look at each individual hurricane, not just the ones i talk what indie book, but they have a massive impact on that regions local history. However, that impact has rippled, they go out well beyond the area of landfall. Although i didnt do it in my book, an economist, as an economist could go back and gather data on all of the hurricanes in the modern era maybe from the late 1800s and look at the reverberations of each one of those hurricanes, not just within a community, a region or estate, but to the broader economy, i think hurricanes would come to be seen more clearly as a major determinant in our nations economic history and also as a determinant and the things that happened, or didnt happen, because hurricanes had such a major impact. I i think that would be a fascinating study. Not one that im going to do. Yeah. I have another question. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of naming hurricanes. Is oh, yeah, many hurricanes. This is one of the part of the book i enjoyed writing about the most. Basically in the late 1800s come early 1900s a guy named meteorologist in australia started naming cyclones which are just hurricanes by another name, after beautiful tahitian women, dusky maidens he referred to them as. His effort got squash for a variety of reasons but then you fastforward to 1941 when a novelist named George Rippey stewart wrote a book called storm, which was a national bestseller. In that but it talks about a storm that traveled across the pacific and slammed into california. Its not a a typhoon. It wasnt a hurricane, but in the book one of the junior meteorologists decide to name the hurricane, not just that one, that storm and others from after women. He names this storm marais. That book got sent to gis and save in the Pacific Theater during world war ii and thats part of the reason the navy in the army started unofficially naming typhoons which again are just hurricanes by another name, after women. In the early 1950s the Weather Bureau, the predecessor to the National Weather service, started naming hurricanes after the army phonetic alphabet able baker charlie, but there was some confusion because theres another phonetic alphabet that was suggested pixel in 1956 the Weather Service finally decided to name hurricanes after women. They definitely got that idea from what was happening in the Pacific Theater during world war ii. The robot of protests. One woman says she would much rather have a hurricane, an unnamed hurricane hit her house than one named after one of her husbands former girlfriends. But the protests died down and it wasnt until late 1960s when roxie bolton spoke up. She was a Vice President of the National Position of women. She said a truly horrible to associate women with these dramatic and devastating meteorological events. She really got annoyed and reading all the News Coverage about vicious, treacherous, wild, horrific female named hurricanes coming up the coast or hitting the gulf coast. So she lobbied the National Weather service to change their naming system. She didnt get much traction until jimmy carter came in office, and he appointed juanita kreps, the first email secretary of commerce, who was a selfdescribed feminist, and when you do crabs agreed with roxie bolton and she use a considerable pressure of the United States because the World Meteorological organization to start naming hurricanes on an alternating basis after men and women and thats how we come up with the annual list of 21 names alternating between men and women. I just love that story but yes, talk about surprises. I knew nothing about that story. I think its a fascinating place of the Womens Movement and meteorological history. We have a comment in the chat that says roxie bolton, yet a period. [laughing] can you tell us about bonito vines . May need to find is a jesuit priest who took over the observatory in cuba in the mid to late, sort of later 1800s. He was wellversed in the history of meteorology, fascinated by and he decided to make the observatory a major leader in forecasting hurricanes and monitoring the weather in the caribbean. He went back over all the records that have been taken in the years before he arrived, organize them, bought some barometers and other weather measurement machines, and he started tracking the weather on cuba on a daily basis, sometimes as many as ten times a day he would write down his observation. He 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. He looked at the signs, not only the brick red skies in the morning and the lowering barometric pressure and the high wispy clouds and a long, deep swells in the ocean, but other signs, intravesical became a very good forecaster of hurricanes. He wasnt always right but he was right more than luck would have allowed. The sad part of this story is that after he died, people yet put into place continued his observations. But right before the galveston hurricane of 1900, the United States basically cut off the connection between the Weather Bureau and the observatory. They didnt benefit from observations right before the galveston hurricane came in and clobbered galveston. And if they had paid more attention to the expertise of the cubans, maybe it would been a better evacuation. Maybe the death toll wouldnt have risen so high to make it the worst Natural Disaster in American History with at least 6000 that and maybe as many as ten or 12,000. It was a sign of the times. A lot of americans are quite condescending in their view of their spanish counterparts in the caribbean, and, unfortunately, i think we suffered for that. So it was mainly american arrogance the sever the relationship . Yeah, american arrogance on the part of who ran the Weather Bureau. He wanted everything weather related to come from washington headquarters. He definitely had a less than favorable view of the cubans who he felt were too often easily alarmed and slapped the title of the designation hurricane on too many storms. One of the things willis want to do was try to avoid panicking americans about oncoming threats. Sometimes panic is necessary to get people to take the actions that they should be taking. We have been talking for an hour now. Its been a lot of fun for me and im sure others, but before i go i would if you tell us a little bit about your next book and when you expect to i mean, is this going to be two years, another to your project . Just give us a little sneak peek, if you will. Its about privateering witches sort of religion my powerbook because a lot of people call privateers which gives licenses from government during time of war to attack the enemy shipping. A lot of people call them license hybrids. When everything my book is going to strongly argue is that is not a good designation. They are not licensed privates. 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 had been put out of work because of the onset of the American Revolution. It also played a role in the outcome of the American Revolution. I think far too often history of that war discount or disparage the role of privateers, and im hoping to write a history that gives them a place of honor that i truly think they deserve, along with George Washington and our military and congress and are founding fathers, that they are an integral part of the story that is too often overlooked. And yes, its going to come out im working on it right now. You asked before about my research process. I tend to do the research for the book for i write it. Just about done doing most of the research for this book and i expect in the very near future to begin writing it. But i was handed in about 18 months, 22 months after i signed the contract and it will come out, i guess not next year but the year after that it will come out not long after your book on eagles. Will this be as well . Yes. To working with bob again. Yes. A great team. After writing this big book on hurricanes and writing your new book on privateering, do you have a whole new perspective of hurricanes and the role in privateering . Will hurricanes figure in this next book . They might, they might not. Given eagerness with which asked the question i wish my answer was 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 . Theres some good storms in there but but i dont think the hurricanes. Okay. Human storms as well as natural storms. Yes, yes. Well, so [inaudible] a wonderful conversation. I want to thank both of you all. Very enlightening. Cant wait to get more into the book and remind people we will have signed copies of a furious sky if you want to order just get in touch with the bookstore. Eric, congratulations. Thank you. Much luck in the future. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me. Tanks, jack. My pleasure. So enjoyable. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for zooming in. Okay. Take care. Weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs as a preview of whats available a good weekend on cspan2. Cspan2. Tonight we focus on biographies and memoirs. Watch tonight beginning at 8 p. M. Eastern. Enjoy booktv this week and every weekend on cspan2. You are watching booktv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas cabletelevision companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television