Braving the Elements [Paperback]

David Laskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 1997

Nowhere in the world is weather as volatile and powerful as it is in North America.  Scorching heat in the Southwest, hurricanes on the Atlantic coast, tornadoes in the Plains, blizzards in the mountains:  Every area of the country has vastly different weather, and vastly different cultures as a result. Braving the Elements is David Laskin's delightful and fascinating history of how our unique weather has shaped a nation, and how we've tried to cope with it over centuries.

Since before Columbus, the peoples of America have struggled to make sense of the capricious and violent nature of America's weather.  Anasazi Indians used the rain dance (and sometimes human sacrifice) to induce rain, while the Puritans in New England blamed the sins of the community for lightening strikes and Nor'easters.  IN modern times we carry on those traditions by blaming the weatherman for ruined weekends.  Despite hi-tech satellites and powerful computers and 24-hour-a-day forecasting from The Weather Channel, we're still at the mercy of the whims of Mother Nature.

Laskin recounts the many dramatic moments in American weather history, from the "Little Ice Age" to Ben Franklin's invention of the lightning rod to the Great Blizzard of the 1930's to the worries about global warming.  Packed with fresh insights and wonderful lore and trivia, Braving the Elements is unique and essential reading for anyone who's ever asked, "What's it like outside?"


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Journalist David Laskin writes, "The history of weather is both a history of nature and a history of human desire. A history that is made and erased every day." And the history of American weather is particularly problematic: "Our weather and climate have been strange since the beginning of our history. Our perceptions have always been skewed by expectation, our memories distorted by self-interest." From a European perspective, North American weather is never usual: it is too hot, too cold, too violent, and, for most of the continent, much too dry. But Americans' minds never quite catch up with the weather where they actually live: "When we move, weather is the last thing we leave behind and the first thing we find when we arrive. Weather, in a sense, is home." Laskin's great insight is that the weather is never what we expect, because we always misremember the past. And in America in particular, this unexpected weather is always a sign of something: God's vengeance, human tampering, the progress or the regress of civilization. Laskin covers American weather from the warm spell that lured the Norse to Greenland, through the little ice age and the dust bowl, up to the greenhouse anxieties of the turn of the millennium. "We are constantly making and revising the history of weather, but weather itself is ahistorical. Infinite, fathomless, incalculable, it just keeps happening, regardless, every day." --Mary Ellen Curtin

From Publishers Weekly

Laskin (A Common Life) contends that weather is a "human fabrication": the condition of the heavens becomes what we call "weather" only "after it has touched us and we have touched it." Thanks to the science of dendrochronology, it is possible to determine what American weather was like in prehistory, but the subject becomes more absorbing with the advent of the Puritans. They were devout believers in what the author terms theological meteorology, which placed the praise or blame for the vagaries of our climate on God's doorstep. Current practitioners of this applied science, aided by radar, satellites and computers, are able to bring a little order out of the chaos that is the enduring characteristic of weather. And with the development of global warming theories, more emphasis is now placed on terrestrial rather than celestial solutions to weather problems. From Native American rain dances through the establishing of the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1891 to changing styles of TV weatherpersons, Laskin engagingly covers it all.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (June 16, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038546956X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385469562
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,537,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Laskin was born in New York in 1953 and educated at Harvard College and New College, Oxford. For the past twenty-five years, Laskin has written books and articles on a wide range of subjects including history, weather, travel, gardens and the natural world. His most recent book, The Children's Blizzard, won the Washington State Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award for Nonfiction. Laskin's other titles include Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather, Partisans: Marriage, Politics and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals, A Common Life: Four Generations of American Literary Friendship and Influence, and Artists in their Gardens (co-authored with Valerie Easton). A frequent contributor to The New York Times Travel Section, Laskin also writes for the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, and Seattle Metropolitan. He and his wife Kate O'Neill, the parents of three grown daughters, live in Seattle with their two sweet old dogs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for the weather and history buff!, August 11, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather (Hardcover)

There have been many books on weather and climate that havepassed through my hands over the last twenty five years.This is one of the more memorable ones. When my brother comes over for a visit I'll go to the bookshelf, pull thisvolume down and read page after page to him. Why? Well, quite simply David Laskin condensed the American climateinto a slender volume that reads like a good novel. Merging modern meteorological understanding and historical research he brings alive the shock European settlers feltwhen they experienced the frigid North American winters andblistering summers. He introduces the reader to theologicalmeteorology, nationalist meteorology, and plain old badmeteorology, all in a style designed to excite and educate the reader."BRAVING TH

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE AMERICAN WEATHER EXPERIENCE, November 21, 2003

By 

Severin Olson (Hyattsville, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather (Hardcover)

In 'Braving the Elements', Laskin gives us a brief history of American weather and how we have survived, forcast, and endured it. The first part of the book looks at Native American and colonial weather, explaining how our perceptions of the elements were being shaped even then. A fascinating chapter looks at the West and the Great Plains, describing the tornadoes, blizzards and dust storms common to the region.

The book's second half covers the National Weather Service and present-day meteorology, showing how technology has changed the art of weather forcasting. We see the daily weather report through the eyes of the weather men themselves.

Laskin is a great writer whose book will appeal to weather buffs and others alike. I only wish he had spent more time covering specific storms in our history and how they have shaped communities.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars weather as history, history as weather, October 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather (Hardcover)

Every other day we get some weather disaster on cnn then forget it. This book gives the larger picture, over time: the patterns and changes, as well as a fascinating history of how weather was viewed and recorded. You'll find lots more here than you would think.