The Tornado (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University) [Paperback]

John Edward Weems (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Tornado was wonderful. . . . Wonderfully exciting. It is full of people and the thousands of details that make up their lives--and deaths. [It is] a story of enormous power."--Annie Dillard

(Annie Dillard )

About the Author

JOHN EDWARD WEEMS, a resident of Waco, has written eleven books, including Weekend in September, the highly acclaimed account of the 1900 Galveston hurricane. He is a Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters and has received that organization's prestigious Barbara McCombs/Lon Tinkle Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: TAMU Press (October 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0890964602
• ISBN-13: 978-0890964606
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,701,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best tornado narrative available !, December 1, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tornado (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University) (Paperback)

This book is a must have for anybody interested in tornadoes. It tells in detail about the lives that were forever changed when a massive tornado ripped through Waco Texas in 1953. This is one of the few times a tornado has hit a downtown area head on. This may happen again, especially with the huge population growth. It is also rumored to be the theme of the sequel to the Twister ! movie.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The 1953 Waco tornado, January 27, 2010

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Tornado (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University) (Paperback)

I read this author's book about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, A Weekend in September and found it very compelling, so when I found "The Tornado" (originally published in 1977), I immediately bought it. This book tells the story of another natural disaster: the F5 tornado that flattened the business section of Waco, Texas and killed 114 people on May 11, 1953.

The heart of this book is formed from the survivors' narratives, but Weems doesn't jump immediately into this part of the story. Instead, he spends quite a bit of time describing the hours before Waco's downtown was churned into mud, bricks and bodies by the huge funnel cloud, as he worked on his father's cattle ranch, nearby.

Texas was in the grip of a drought that spring, and as he and his father repair the farm's windmill under darkening skies, Weems veers off into a description of the science, history, and mythology of meteorology.

In 1953, this author worked as a newspaper reporter, so when his editor called him up at the ranch, he grabbed his notebook, pencil, and camera, and started to track the path of the tornado. We are then treated to a history of Waco, and are over halfway through this book, and into Chapter 8 ("Approach on Downtown") before the F5 twister and the author head on into the city, itself.

The remainder of "The Tornado" focuses on the eyewitness accounts of the survivors, "based mostly on information given immediately afterward, when the details were still vivid." These survival stories are indeed gripping. I just wish the author had gotten to them a little sooner.

This book's black-and-white photographs show the destruction an F5 tornado can wreak on a large city's downtown. If you had somehow assumed that city centers are immune to Nature's most violent storms, "The Tornado" will definitely change your mind.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book about Tornadoes. And I live near Waco!, November 20, 2000

By 

"mewb2bmt" (Waco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tornado (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University) (Paperback)

If you haven't read this book you don't know what a best seller is about. It was pure fact, electric and mesmerizing. I couldn't put it down. The author interviewed the survivors first hand. Not some fictional made-for-TV slop.