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 peop