Customer Reviews

The Weather Factor: How Nature Has Changed History

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Reading Durchmied's "The Weather Factor" (the sequel to last year's "The Hinge Factor") is one of life's guilty pleasures. Although I sometimes wondered whether the author might be one of those who is "often in error, but never in doubt," I didn't see any obvious mistakes. More to the point, I thoroughly enjoyed the author's style and selection of events.

The book is not about the weather as such, so it doesn't discuss the nuances of isobars or storm fronts; rather, it focuses on how the weather has changed the outcome of selected historical events. Durschmied's new book is thus a continuation of his narrative in "The Hinge Factor."

Among the events the author describes: the destruction of three Roman legions in Teutoberger Wald in AD 9 in the face of a wild thunderstorm; the "divine wind" that destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet in 1281; the destruction of Napoleon's Grand Army in 1812; the Irish potato famine of the 1840s; war in the Alps, 1916-18; the defeat of Hitler's Russian offensive in 1941; and a somewhat surprising reason why the Soviet Union was not willing to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban missile crisis. Durchmied writes with a dramatic skill that brings these events to life.

One of the best measures of how much I enjoyed a book is how much I look forward to the next one by the same author. I noticed that Durchmied's books are published in Europe about a year before they arrive in the United States, so I visited Amazon's UK site to see whether Durschmied had written anything new. In fact, he has: he just published a new book called "The Whisper of the Blade," which appears to be a history of revolutions. I've already ordered it, and I'm looking forward to its arrival here on the other side of the pond.

I very much enjoyed reading "The Hinge Factor" and so I bought this book hoping to find more similar reading material. Chapter 1 raised my doubts and after finishing Chapter 2 I was really disappointed by this book. The episodes are really lenghty and somewhat hard to read/follow - the book is not well written. The most disappointing fact, however, is that this book has not very much to do with military history but focuses almost entirely on political history. The influence of the weather, as the title of the book suggests, seems almost constructed and bears almost no meaning to the events described.

If you're interested in the weather (as the title might just lead you to expect), don't bother. If your interests lie in military history, then you may enjoy it. The book is littered with factual innacuracies and bizarre grammar (is this a translation?, or is Durschmied a non-native English speaker who couldn't be bothered to have his text proofed?) and the author mixes fact with fiction to such an extent that one ends up presuming the whole thing is made up and tossing it in the nearest rubbish bin.

This book has received mixed reviews;therefore my expectations were not high when I started it.The first couple of events didn't excite me too much,but then they happened so long ago and I am not too familiar with those times. The more I got into the book ,the better I found it.The author gives very good summaries of events that in most cases were very complicated.This is not simple,but coming from a background of a journalist he does an excellent job.I find most history writing is too detailed even to the point of being an exercise in drudgery.The author is crisp and only drags out the story enough to set the scene.Then he goes into a good description of the weather condition and how it impacted the event.He shows in these events that the weather conditions had much more impact on the outcome of the event than the skills or the weapons of the forces involved.
I have read extensively about The Great Potato Famine and was impressed how well he covered this massive event which was very complicated,extended over several years,and did it in only 18 pages.In addition ,he really brought out the effect the weather had;a factor that is not usually as well emphasized.
A book of these shortened historys also reminded me of somewhat "corresponding"(in want of a better word) events.For instance I had never given it much thought that The Red Army launched it's defense of Moscow on Dec 6,1941 the day before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.Another thing was that at the same time that Napoleon was trying to take Moscow the British and the Americans were fighting the War of 1812 in North America.

The book has many other little gems:
The Potato Famine in Ireland may have had it's roots in the American Potato Blight of 1844.However;this may be of some question as I believe the blight also occurred in several other european countries.The effect elsewhere was nowhere as disasterous as the other food supplies were not shipped out of those countries by the landowners as happened in Ireland.
Two other cities ,Kokura and Niigata were ahead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets;but were by-passed because of weather conditions.
The author also tries to make one think of how future events,particularly wars will be influenced by weather.
Finally he reminds us that...
"Man has managed to harnass almost everything.
But God still controls the elements."
By the way there is an excellent Bibliography and Index at the end of the book.
Durschmied also mentions that he's working on a new book "The Snow Owl"--I'm looking forward to it.

My local library had this book filed under 551, i.e., in the meteorology section, which I think is an error. This book is more of a military history focusing on how weather has influenced the outcome of battles and therefore of history. The science of weather plays a small part.

That being said, it's an interesting read. It's divided into chapters, each devoted to a specific incident. Some are reasonably well-known, such as the battle at Teutoburger Wald that cost Rome three legions (included here due to a thunderstorm that bogged down the Romans and led the Germanic "barbarians" to think that their gods were on their side), the typhoon that destroyed Kublai Khan's fleet heading to invade Japan, and Napoleon's disastrous march on Russia that was devastated by the legendary Russian winter. Others were (to me, at least) more obscure: the thunderstorm that scattered the mobs in Paris and thereby cost Robespierre his supporters, the weather during the Battle of the Bulge that first protected the Germans from air attack and then cleared to leave them vulnerable to the Allies' unchallenged fighters and bombers, and the typhoon that devastated the American Pacific fleet in World War II.

The one non-battle chapter focuses on the Irish potato famine, which was facilitated by a cool, rainy summer that allowed the potato-killing fungus to flourish.

The penultimate chapter, about fighting in the Mekong delta during the Vietnam War, provides a change since it's written in the first person. The author, a war correspondent, was actually there, and gives a personal view of what it's like to fight natives in the muggy misery of a tropical jungle.

The final chapter addresses the possibility of manipulating the weather in the future to provide better prospects for one's own forces or worse prospects for the enemies'. This has apparently already been tried, with American forces trying to get it to rain on the Ho Chi Minh trail in order to bog down Viet Cong supplies.

The book is readable enough, though with one strange quirk: footnotes that provide additional information rather than references. These quickly become distracting, and I think some should have just been incorporated into the regular text while the rest should either have been eliminated or moved to the back. It's a strange affectation and not at all helpful.

So, overall it's an interesting book even if not what I expected.

First the positive: "The Weather Factor" is a readable book that tells some good stories. Now the negative: it is also not terribly insightful for anyone who knows a lot about history. If you already know the story of events such as the Irish potato famine, the retreats of Napoleon and Hitler in the face of the Russian winter, or of the massive Pacific storm that savaged Admiral Bull Halsey's fleet in December 1944, then you aren't going to learn anything new. For a book allegedly about the weather, Durschimed spends so much time giving general background information that the weather itself gets the short shrift in his narratives. He could just as easily have called the book a collection of random historical essays, which is essentially what it is.

The two most bizzare chapters come at the end. One tells of his own personal experience as a war corrrespondant in the Mekon Delta, like the revelation that jungle conditions hampered American war efforts in Vietnam is a something new. The other is his essay on possible future attempts to use weather control devices as military weapons. This is an intriguing notion, but anyone who knows anything about science will realize that the technology for such a possibility will never be had, if at all, by 2025, which is the random date picked by the author for the title of the chapter.

Overall, "The Weather Factor" is not a bad book, but people with a real interest in weather as well as history buffs will likely be disappointed.

This survey of weather doesn't take the usual science approach, but draws some important connections between weather and history. Chapters revel how political and social decisions have often been decided by the elements, from rain and hurricanes to hard winters. An intriguing survey of how human destiny is often determined by the elements.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I purchased the Hinge Factor, this author's previous attempt to explain the outcome of events on external factors, and found it to be both poorly written and historically inaccurate. It was a badly executed work, although it was an interesting concept. Notwithstanding this, I ended up buying this book to see if, perhaps, better editing had resulted in a better product.

Sadly, the answer is no. This book is, once again, contains numerous writing errors (it is quite clear that this author's primary language in not English, and either this is a bad translation, or was not subject to proper editing) and confusing fact and fiction. Another failed effort. Perhaps not as disappointing as the Hinge Factor, but still really not worth ones time and effort. Sorry.

When a hurricane struck New Orleans, it produced more than a natural disaster: it produced the understanding that global warming would have long ranging effects. In this book specific historical trends were changed
due to weather ( battles were won or lost or never fought).
If the Soviet Union had used atomic weapons on Europe
they would have doomed themselves to fall out as a result.
The Chinese navy off Japan and the Spanish Armada both found that winds can play a big part in war.
The last chapter talks about controlling the forces of weather
using some of the new discoveries of science.
This mostly history book is a useful and educational one.

Weather Factor is Durschmied's second contribution of interesting yet counter-factual history. While still entertaining, Durschmied seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel or was rushed to publish Weather Factor. His characteristic writing style is lacking in the sequel as is the solid analysis present in Hinge Factor. Weather Factor is still worth the read, but like many sophomore productions, does not live up to the original.