Thoughts and prayers go out to everybody in the lake charles in Cameron Parish and the whole area. I know we were speaking earlier saying, there will probably have many weeks if not months of no power and having trouble with her water system. Even people as far north as shreveport and monroe are still without power. Our thoughts go out to them. Anyway, we are here today with jack davis, will be in conversation with the author and jack is a professor of history specializing in environmental history and sustainability studies. And also the author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning the gulf the making of an american sea. The New York Times book review called this book a beautiful march to a neglected see. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize it was a New York Times notable book for 2017 and that several other this list that you including the washington post, npr and forbes. Jack, welcome. Its a pleasure to have you here with us today. My pleasure to be here. Im going to turn the floor over to jack and eric and let them start the conversation. And one final thing. If people have questions they can write that in the chat room and will try to get to those questions if not during the talk, at the very end. And also encourage people who have not gotten the new book, we will have signed of the book shop and you all can go to our website which is Garden District book shop. Com and place those orders are just give us a call, be happy to ship books for you anywhere in the country and anywhere in the world. Some going to trip over to jack and eric. Welcome. Thank you. We will start with me introducing eric. Im sure youre familiar with his work. He is a prolific author. 14 books. He is a nonfiction writer who specializes in writing history that is really geared for the intellectual curious audience. A good narrative writer, outstanding narrative writer type of history that doesnt put you to sleep. Among his more notable books, and hes won numerous awards for his books, among his more notable ones are leviathan, a New York Times bestseller, and another great book that a read a couple years ago, last book before proceeding a furious sky was black lives, bluewater. And the book about the history of pirates. If that large history was large enough so we going to tackle hurricane history. I read this book, actually just before i came out, somebody who grew up in florida and lives in florida and instantly with hurricane history, books have been written on hurricane history i have known for a long time, we have been due for a good book on hurricanes. Its a huge, huge topic. Eric tackled it masterfully. Despite this topic being so huge he was able to put it in the book that you can actually hold in your hand. And its a lovely book, as i have said. So im really looking forward to having this conversation with eric today. And so i want to start by asking eric, why did you decide to write this book on hurricanes . Why did you decide to take on this new topic and undoubtedly torture yourself on some level . Level to figure out how to bring it into something, this huge topic into a manageable one. Well, i had long thought about writing a book about hurricanes, but the problem was i wanted to write about a particular hurricane. The two hurricanes as most interested in with the galveston hurricane of 1900, and the great hurricane of 1938 which it long island and new england were happened to live. But there was a problem. Both of those hurricanes had only had quite a few really good books written about them. So i put the idea aside. I went on to write black flags, blue waters and then came the summer and fall of 2017 the Hurricane Season from hell. When we had Hurricane Harvey, irma and maria like destroy different parts of the United States. So right after that season was over somebody you know very well, bob, my editor and your editor [inaudible] got together with bill and i thought there should be a book on history of american hurricanes and the newly thought of me because i seem to have a particular talent for pulling together come synthesizing huge amounts of information into a readable narrative. They reached out to my literary agent and asked him if id be interested in writing a book about hurricanes are key in turn reached out to me. I didnt immediately said yes, because before i sign up to a book i have to have a vision of what the book is going to look like. I did know a lot about hurricanes at the time other than the two i mentioned. I went up for about a month and half and i read a ton of books and articles and primary accounts of hurricanes, as in the whole book came into view and i said okay, ill write the book. Got the proposal and the rest is history. You said you had this vision of writing the book or what it would look like. As you writing the book and when you came to completing it, had that vision remained pretty much the same or did you find yourself staring off in Different Directions to make this book into what you wanted and something that would appeal to your reading audience . It stayed pretty much as i envisioned it at the outset. Thats partly because before start a book when i put together a book proposal i spend a lot of time making notes and outlining why think the book is going to go. I wont sign a a book contract until i am reasonably confident that about lent the book of the whale to go. There were some surprises and stores it did make in the book, other stories i discovered along the way. But believe it or not the general outline and the rough chapter outline, which i developed a little bit later, stayed fairly constant. Part of that is a function of my books tend to be chronological. Sometimes they skipped back in time but most often they marched through history in a chronological fashion. Once you know the general labor the land and you know what the big ticket stories are you want to incorporate and what the big themes are, then its a matter of just putting sort of flesh on the bone. There are always surprises when you write a book, at least for me. That goes to virtually everyone a book except one was on a topic it is a future amount about before i started working on it. I do that on purpose because i have to spend almost two years working on these books. I tend to get bored easily so if i dont pick a topic that is going to excite me every couple weeks or maybe every day, that would be a problem. One of the best ways to do that is to pick a topic that im not an expert in. Because then im guaranteed to be surprised along the way, and that surprise and excitement not only fuels my work on the book but im hoping that it translates to some extent to the written page. I think it does, at least in my opinion. Lets talk a little about the writing process itself. You talk about chapter outline. Do you start with very detailed chapter outline and pretty much stick to those . Or do your outlines more loose rex how about your research . You complete your research before you even sit down to write or are you researching along the way . You have been writing books for a long time. Ud Research Today very different from the way we did not too many years ago. Archives across the country and now archives are digitized so much so our archives often just our study in our home with the computer in front of us. What happened, youre right, evolved immuno level to my first book for norton was this whaling book. They did know me from adam. I had written six or seven books before that but they had not been large press, major publishers. The proposal for my whaling book was almost 100 pages long, very detailed, outlined in the chapter. Whats happened since i stayed with norton for six books now, theyve got to know me, they trust me more. My proposals have overtime gotten shorter and shorter. My actual proposal for the hurricane book i think only weighed in at about 17 doublespaced pages. Its more like an essay of what i thought the book was going to be about. But behind that i had a rough idea of the chapters that are used for my purposes. So you have to have a map in order to get someplace, but my map has become less and less detailed overtime, and id like to think that is in part because i have gotten better at this process and i sort of no more quickly what are the things i want to talk about in the book and what direction do i want about to go in. That you talked about researching. Its changed tremendously. When i was starting writing books in the late 1990s i would almost always have to go to very specialized libraries to get information i needed. It was rarely digitized and even some of these places didnt have good copy machines so i was taking a lot of hand notes which is a a real problem for me bece i flunked handwriting in elementary school. I have very poor handwriting and i dont write fast. So using a typewriter was good back then or when computers came in i started to use computers. Whats happened in the last ten or 15 years is just an entire seachange, so much is digitized that only google books which allows you to access virtually any book written before 1923 on almost any topic but a lot of the Major Research institutions around the country have spent a lot of money digitizing some other key documents here with a few keystrokes i can quickly be overwhelmed with the data. Ill give an example. Just today im working on a new book on privateering in the American Revolution and i was doing research on it today and is reading a book from i think 1850, and that book mention a certain privateer. I got on google and i put into privateers name and one of his vessels, and all of a sudden at six or seven other documents inn 1800s, early 1900s talk about this privateer. I can start to put together a story. Its the same with hurricanes. The big problem with this book was not a lack of information. The big problem was deciding with this huge amount of data that was available to me what do i use. I had to make hundreds of decisions about what to leave out and what not to read. What were you looking for in the history of individual hurricanes that make the grade for the book . Was there particular criterion you wanted to include, in order to include a hurricane . Im not sure there were criteria, but what draws me the most and i sort of right books in the manner i would like to read them. I dont want them to be boring. I love Human Interest stories. The stories go 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 i love the stories about e individuals that survived and didnt survive various hurricanes. Stories of meteorologist, politicians and the other people who got swept up into the story both good and bad. Because i think people gravitate most easily to stories about other human beings being put in unique situations, and hurricanes certainly fills that bill. I didnt spend as much time talking about administrative stuff and regulations and that kind of stuff. I really wanted to focus on the human side of the story. I think thats what i like about your book and some of the of the hurricane book been written do that. The focus on the administrative side or climatology and they leave out the Human Interest story. Your book reminded me of Marjory Stoneman douglas original hurricane, it was a bridge, a Human Interest story and i love that book. When you think of Marjory Stoneman douglas we think of the everglades but i think our book on hurricanes is right up there with the rest of them, and certainly a book that needs to be updated which you have clearly done here. What were some of the surprises that stand it in your mind you might share with us that kept you glued to the desk writing . What of the big surprises come have hurricanes have affected the course of American History. In your state alone i was fascinated to read about in the 1550s and the 1560s when the spanish were trying to settle florida and now the first settlement in pensacola was basically wiped out by hurricane or just think about how history might have changed if that settlement survived. Also a few years later on the east coast of florida that was a Battle Royale between the french and the spanish were both interested in colonizing florida. And the french which had a very formidable fleet was about ready to attack the spanish who had settled 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 the attack, a hurricane comes along and basically wipes out half of the french fleet. And in the spanish killed 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 if. What if france settled florida and not spend . How might the history of our country been different . Might there not a been a United States . That was just asked any. There other stories like that. Nothing that fascinated me, to step back what i said before, since i do know a lot about hurricanes and i certainly didnt 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 how our understanding of hurricanes evolved was just fascinating to me. The role of cuba in early hurricane science and understanding of the role of father bonita vines was fascinating. To hear that president mckinley said during the spanishamerican war when it started that is more afraid of what hurricanes are going to do to American Forces that any military attacks that might occur in the spanish. Every single story in the book, i i was excited to read about them because we were telling me about the aspects of American History and evolution of the Hurricane Hunter played in the first person decided, joseph duckworth, to fly into hurricane when nobody had done it before. And how sputnik led to the ultimate creation of satellites and then the creation of weather satellites. And still had today with all of our technology, all of our ability to watch a hurricane from inception to dissolution come to understand how much uncertainty there still is, the computer model 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. It couldve been 15 in either direction, the story mightve been quite different. The storm surge mightve actually reached 20 feet. It was up until the very last note when landfall occurred, there was still questions about where it is going to occur and what the ultimate impact was going to be. That again relates to the notion about hurricanes affect American History. Just the vagaries of meteorological happenstance and if a hurricane had jogged 20 miles, 30 miles this direction versus that direction, just think how different our history would be. Look at new orleans where 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, itd given new orleans a direct hit. That mightve been a very different story, and believe it or not an even worse story and what came out of it. So when did hurricane forecasting really become decent . For many, many years of course the u. S. Weather service was hopelessly incompetent when it came to forecasting and tracking hurricanes. Is there a particular turning point in history when u. S. Government meteorologist will he became expert and reliable . It would has to do with their ability to get eyes on the storm. Storm. With the advent of radio there was the opportunity for ships to send reports to meteorologist on land. They could supplement that with information that was sent over telegraphs perhaps in the early years and telephones later on. But really it starts to change fundamentally in the 1940s and 50s when the Hurricane Hunter planes came online pixel when hurricane, within a tank full of gas for a plane basically to go out into the atlantic or the caribbean and see with this hurricane was, see what it was doing, since instruments into the hurricane and then relayed the information back to the meteorologist on land, their ability to track the hurricanes was much improved. But then with satellites of course it was a whole different ballgame. Now you can literally watching hurricane developed, see as it creeps across atlantic up to the creeping into the gulf coast, and never lose sight of it. So no longer can we be completely surprised by hurricanes. And adding to that, not only were we able to see them and gather data on them, but with sophisticated computerized weather prediction models which started to come online in the 1950s and have greatly improved since then, then we had the added piece of the armamentarium for the meteorologists to take all the data that there collecting in real time, add that to their historical understanding of hurricanes that hurricane tracks, come and give us a much better idea of where this hurricane is going, how powerful its likely to be in there for what kind of and, therefore, what kind of protections or what kind of steps we need to take to deal with it before it actually arrives. So the art of our understanding of hurricanes, are meteorological understanding and our ability to track them as the evolved 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 lucky. We are fortunate, that doesnt reduce the impact of the hurricane because one of the annoying things is that theres nothing we can do as human beings to avert their strike. All we can do is better plan and prepare and deal with the aftermath. So in in a narrative history such as yours in which you are dealing with the Human Interest stories, obviously there are, or sometimes, our heroic figures that stand out. One of might and the gulf come your family with his national roberts, new orleans is my with, the longtime weatherman there who nobody could out call him on hurricanes. He didnt trust the u. S. Weather service. He never used technology. He never used the green screen and always use the squeaky markers on a whiteboard. Who