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 is some of your heroes, weather forecasters or someone who is in a particular hurricane to save the lives . One of heroes actually has some residents today. Hurricane laura came through, really did a number on Cameron Parish. They are going to be dealing with that for many years. Well, not too long ago, 1957, hurricane audrey came roaring ashore at the end of june and basically leveled Cameron Parish. But theres one individual that i took the book out with, doctor cecil clarke and his wife. He had 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 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 if they all knew him because he was a local doctor, and they begged him to go to the Cameron Parish courthouse where many people 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 his maid. He had no idea. Yet, he decided come because of this professional responsibility and the oath that he took to his patients that he was going to go to the courthouse and tend to them. Andy did and it wasnt coming hours later, more than a day actually, that he found out that his wife had survived during the storm by disc three youngest children and the maid had been killed. I would expect other people to do the same. He is one of the heroes who put the needs of others above the needs of himself in another simile placed hero during the hurricane of 1893 that killed maybe as many 2 3000 people and we did not have a mechanism or machinery for helping people after hurricanes but she and her relatively new American Red Cross with volunteers swept into the sea islands off georgia and South Carolina and she help those people during their time of greatest need to get up off the ground and start planning to be in themselves for the future and one other story that came out of the hurricane of 1983 which i love about dunbar davis, he was a lifesaver and oak island North Carolina, a lifesaving station and after the hurricane he basically went without sleep for almost 35 hours and in that span he saved nearly 20 mariners who shifted founders offshore and brought them back to a lifesaving station and then finally he got to take a nap at the end of the ordeal, he is another hero and i think there are many, many heroes, you and norah lynns during hurricane katrina, many people came in to help out, one of the most interesting was a cajun navy, all those people with their boat from around louisiana came down to new orleans and they helped save 10000 people over the span of a week or two and i think in my eyes they are heroes as well my dad used to saying, not a saint he came up with, i dont know what philosopher or writer wrote this first but im sure it goes back hundreds if not thousands of years, adversity introduces a man or woman to itself and in times of duress, like a hurricane, there are people who do heroic deeds because they have been called upon and there was nobody else, it was them or something horrible is going to happen, a lot of people step up, a lot of people dont. One thing about hurricane in 1957, some 500 people lost their lives in much of louisiana people still remember that we suffer something of what i call hurricane amnesia and not in agreement with me, is there any better in remembering, are we teaching important lessons from hurricanes now that its in the history and what might those be. Thats a tough question, have to say up front, my book, and the beginning i talked about the four legs of hurricane in the four stages, the coming of the hurricane, the striking, the immediate aftermath and longtail which is what do people do over years and decades to deal with hurricane destruction and in the fourth element which i dont talk about in the book that much as all the lessons we can learn from hurricanes and i mentioned many but after more generally i do think that we are learning and i think inevitably because of the coverage of hurricanes and the vast amount of money that are involved, during 2017 Hurricane Harvey and maria generated 265 billion worth of damage in irma alone destroyed 50 of the orange crop in florida, when youre dealing with massive dislocation, things that register on the economic scale of the entire country, it forces people to focus and i think theres a lot of good writing about what people can do to better prepare for hurricanes and i do believe today compared to 50 years ago certainly people are much more familiar with the anatomy of hurricane, how meteorologists give us information about them, they know where to go for information of a hurricane is headed toward their area i believe many hurricane Home Communities have good evacuation plans in place, they have Emergency Responder systems, hopefully the interaction or the coordination between the local, state, the interregional and federal responders is Getting Better over time but i will add it depends on funding and Public Policy priorities, fema which has a checkered history to say the least and certainly one of their worst hours in the aftermath of hurricane katrina, their history has been governed to some extent, not completely to some extent by the amount of funding that they get at the federal level and also by the expertise of the people who work for fema are the people who are expert in Emergency Preparedness and response or are they political appointees and there for other reasons. I think there is 20 that we can do to improve the situation whether we actually do that, whether individuals or governments take the steps that are necessary, we have to wait to see in many areas because it costs money to a hurricane proof your house, one of the most is under difficult decisions is having to do with the fact that people still want to live on the coast, people are still moving to the coast and people are building right on the osan edge often times in floodplains that will be walled by a hurricane and better planning and zoning that will be a continuing reframe well into the future. Im starting to see Climate Change refugees moving away from coastal areas, we become something of a climate refugee city and more and more people are leaving and coming through gainesville because they feel safer there, less congestion, they feel more so out of harms way, are we going to start to see more hurricane refugees, is that happening already. It will definitely happen look at hurricane andrew it ripped a 30mile wide into destruction through Miamidade County, 200,000 homes were destroyed, many people about 100,000 people lost their jobs because their place of business was demolished and coincidentally that is the same number about 100,000 people left Miamidade County in the months after the hurricane and i think its inevitable wherever you have a major hurricane strike there will be people that decide they have to lead because they want to get out of the way before the next one comes along, what i would argue when it comes to coastal living there is a strong draw and a magnet that there is going to be outflow, people have been impacted but in the subsequent years you slowly come back. You see that time and again, i know where i live, on the coast we dont get walled by too many hurricanes but we are pretty severe northeaster said to a number on a lot of houses along the coast, yet people love living on the ocean edge and people whose houses have been destroyed or damaged often say rebuild, hopefully a little bit better than before and pray that theyre not going to get struck again, i think its almost inevitable with population expansion and the allure of living in a coastal area that were going to continue to have developments but a place like miamidade and parts of florida they have some of the best building codes in the country when it comes to hurricanes, if you build smarter and better you can avoid some of the problems in the past. Why dont we talk about delivering hurricanes, we think of florida and the gulf coast and we think of the american south, southeast, sandy was obviously a pivotal hurricane and turns towards building codes and other hurricanes that were pivotal or just memorable. Absolutely, louisiana is right up there as is South Carolina, North Carolina and texas, as northerners often dont think about hurricanes nearly as much as you do for good reason because in england only gets smacked with a hurricane about five or ten times a century but we have had some doozies, the biggest is the hurricane of 1938 that slammed into the eastern end of long island and plowed into new england causing a damage, it ends up killing 680 people, about 500 million worth of damage, 1938 and it still to this day is the single worst Natural Disaster in new england history and if you see anybody who is over 90 years old or 85, they remember that hurricane and you speak to many younger people, they heard about the hurricane extensively while they were growing up, Hurricane Sandy had a major impact on new jersey and more importantly new york this is remembered but also the outer and an edges of Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of damage in new england, after all the hurricane was almost 1000 miles wide, in the mid1950s there was an outbreak of hurricanes that affected new england, hurricane carol, edna, hazel and diane and people around you remember hurricane bob there is a funny picture in the book in the College Section of me in 1991, my wife was working with the state of massachusetts, she was my fiance at the time and she had to check the damage in massachusetts and cape cod, i went along with her and she snapped the shot of me standing next to a summer cottage that was leveled by the storm surge in the wind and you get to take a look at the picture, please notice the hawaiian shirt that i am wearing, it was one of my favorite shirts of the time, my soon to be wife hated it and after we got married she got rid of the hawaiian shirt and my suede vest, i still miss both of them. Im looking for that picture. Is at the end of the College Section, look at the insert. [laughter] hold it up a little bit. [laughter] that is me, when my hair was brown. When you had hair. Those who have tuned in, and share any questions in the chat room that you might have, we have plenty of times from questions from you, i want to talk about that expression that is very common when talking about hurricanes in a Natural Disaster, are you assuming Natural Disasters blame nature, who is it to blame for the human consequences of hurricanes. To both Natural Disasters and manmade disasters and human made disasters, the Natural Disaster in the sense that nature is creating a hurricane, theyre getting worse because its human intervention and area of Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases going into the atmosphere and the evidence is mounting that future hurricanes in a warmer world are going to be worse than those of the past, as we get into more modern era, and the last 50 or 60 years a lot of it is a human made disaster, you poorly built houses that are built too close to the coast in a people dont evacuate in a timely manner and they create a whole bunch of problems, not only to their own personal safety but the safety the of the people that have to go in there and rescue them, the entire framework that we created as human beings that gets walloped by these hurricanes depending on how we created the framework and what it looks like and what steps we have taken to prepare for the hurricane and deal with the aftermath, that is the element and thats how it becomes a human made disaster in katrina is the perfect example, the levees, they preach in almost 50 different places, there was a lot of Development Decisions that led up the catastrophe of trina, the least of which a Development Decision that destroyed thousands of square miles of coastal marshland which acted as a natural break or absorb it or the storm surges from hurricane, they were bad decisions made about the construction of the levees. If you go back in time even further you can read about hurricanes in the early 1800s with this wish destroyed levees that even at that time and place in parts of norland. I love new orleans, ive only been there once, i read a lot about their history and im not arguing that we get rid of new orleans, not by a longshot, its a strange place to build a city, youre basically a big saucer undersea level in a coastal region, it was very disturbing at the end of the book and finishing up the research to discover the army corps of engineers after spending tens of billions of dollars in the wake of katrina to shore up the levee system, to build one of the largest pumps in the universe and basically to help protect new orleans from another category 3 hurricane, lo and behold we learned because of subsidence in the structure decision that were made, that new levee system which is very new is not going to afford the level of protection that was built and now we have to make some hard decisions about what to do in the future and whether to invest more money to make sure neural lanes is adequately protected, you cant get rid of the natural component but is compounded by the decisions that we make at every level. I would like to say the army corps of engineers should not be allowed to build anything larger than a bridge. They have many successes in their bag for many failures. [laughter] that gives me another chapted walleye, there are so many ways you could describe hurricane on landfall and theres the big blow, did you make a list so you werent simply repeating. I did not know the list but i definitely had to do that my editor, this is marie, she was doing the editing and she warned me she said dont use the terrible dangerous, devastating, you have to use different words and i was conscious whiles writing it, i did not have a list, i did use my thesaurus and did Search Online and i remember distantly going through the entire book many times right before and after i handed it in and doing searches on different words and if a word that describes a hurricane or impact of a hurricane appeared to many times and i did not have an exact number but if it appeared too many times i said i gotta go back and strategically change these, that was definitely consideration, when you talk about different hurricanes there is some element that there is the same in devastation, how do you talk about that. , related to that i was very happy to hear some early reviewers of the book say that the book was not just hurricane after hurricane with the same story, each hurricane had its own personality, i certainly found that to be the case and that in turn made it easier for me to describe the hurricanes in a way that would not become too repetitive and boring. Basically. You can only say slammed so many times right. In writing about valentino in the road that becomes to everybodys mind is majestic, describing the bald eagle is the word i refuse, i read about the popularity of the word, its a word i refuse to used to describe the bald eagle so we are constantly searching for words to change a language, my book is not just the hurricanes and each one is a story in itself and also part of universal story as well, it is great to see the heroes are recognizing that in the 60 year risk as a writer and also your awareness of your audience, we will have a question, the question is, what to call during your research what was the most surprising thing i think you touched on this about hurricanes and then i have a second question from our accomplices if you can answer the first question, what was the most surprising thing about hurricanes that you came across. I sort of early answer that, let me add one more thing, this has to do the impact of them hurricanes on American History, i love the American Revolution and love reading about the American Revolution and had no idea about the massive hurricanes that swept into the caribbean in 1780 and two of them killed 20000 people but they also destroyed quite a few british and french ships because they use the area for the bottle further to the north and the colonies and also to protect their colonial possession, what was fascinating to me the french decided they did not want to stay in the caribbean for the next Hurricane Season and they were allies to the colonies in the long resisted helping them in a major naval battle, finally they said were gonna go to the summer of 1781 and Everybody Knows what happened the french fleet left the caribbean to get out of the way the hurricane and to help their allies and help turn the tide with a bottle of york which ended when wallace surrendered to George Washington over 1970 81 a major turning point, is not the end of the American Revolution by longshot but it helped to greet the skids for the beginning of the piece negotiation. It is just fascinating to learn about that, and element of the market that i knew nothing about. When we read about the American Revolution, natures role that if that is ever mentioned, you have described historical age and whether. If you want to take a look at it, the weather is major, if you look at each individual hurricane not just the one to talk about in the book, they have a massive impact on that region local history, however, the impact has rippled and they go out well beyond the area of landfall and although i did not do in my book, as an economist can go back and gather data on all the hurricanes in the modern era maybe from the late 1800s and look at the reverberation of each one of those hurricanes, not just within the community, region or state but the broader economy i think that hurricanes would come to be seen more clearly no major deterrent in our economic history and also determined another thing that happened or did not happen because hurricanes had a major impact, they could be a fascinating study, not one that im going to do. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of naming her. This is one part i enjoyed writing about the most, also you quick part of the story, basically the late 1800s early 1900s a guy named clinton a meteorologist in australia started naming cyclones which are hurricanes by another name after beautiful women, a dusty maiden they, his effort got squashed for a variety of reasons but then you fastforward to 1941 when a novelist named george refuse stewart called storm which was a national bestseller, in the book it was a storm and they traveled across the pacific and they slammed into california, its not a typhoon it was not hurricane but in the book one of the junior meteorologist decide to name the hurricane, that storm and other storms after women, he names the store mariah, that book got sent to gis and sealers in the specific untruths Pacific Theater in world war ii that is part the av in the army unofficially naming typhoons which are just hurricanes by another name after women, in the early 1950s the predecessor to the National Weather Service Started naming hurricane after the army phonetic alphabet, baker, charlie, there was confusion because there was another kinetic alphabet that was suggested so in 1956 the Weather Service decided. In the specific theater in world war i, there were a lot of protest, one woman said she would rather have an unnamed hurricane hit her house then one named after the water for husband. The president died down that was not till the late 1960s, roxie bolton was a Vice President of the National Organization of women, she said its horrible to associate women with these dramatic and devastating meteorologist events, she got annoyed at reading all the News Conference coverage about vicious, treacherous, wild, horrific female named hurricanes coming out of the coast or hitting the gulf coast so she lobbied the National Weather service to change their naming system, she did not get much traction until jimmy carter came into office and he appointed wanita the first female secretary of commerce who is a selfdescribed feminist, when she agreed and use the considerable pressure of the United States to get the World Meteorological organization to start naming hurricanes on alternating basis for men and women, thats how we come up with the annual list of 21 names alternating between men and women, i just love the story will talk about surprises i knew nothing about that story and i think its a fascinating place of the Womens Movement in meteorological history. We have a comment in the chat this is roxie goldman, yay. Can you tell us a little bit about hes a priest who took over the blend observatory in cuba in the later 1800s and he was wellversed in the meteorology and fascinated by it and he decided to make the blend observatory a major leader in forecasting hurricanes and monitoring the weather in the caribbean, he went back over the record that was taken into years before he arrived, organize th them, bought barometers of the weather major machines and he started tracking the weather on cuba on a daily basis sometimes as many as ten times a day he would write down his observation and he also had a network of people working throughout the caribbean to provide them with information and through this he slowly came to create a shorthand understanding of hurricanes and he looked at the sign, not only skies in the morning and the lower biometric pressure in the high wispy clouds in the wong deep swells in the ocean the other signs that he became a very good forecaster of hurricanes, he was not always right but he was right more than luck wouldve allowed, the fast part of the story, after he died people that he put into place continued his observation but right before the galveston hurricane in 1900 the United States basically cut off the connection between the Weather Bureau and the observatory, they did not benefit from their observations right before the hurricane clobbered galveston and if they had paid more attention to the expertise of the cubans, maybe there wouldve been a better evacuation and maybe the death toll would not have risen so high to make it the worst Natural Disaster in American History with at least 6000 dead and as many as ten or 12000 but it was a sign of the times, Latin Americans and fight condescending of their spanish counterparts in the caribbean and unfortunately i think that we suffered for that. It was mainly american arrogance that suffered that relationship. American arrogance is a part of the Weather Bureau, everything weather related to come from Washington Headquarters and he definitely had a less than favorable view of the cubans we saw too often easily alarmed and slapped the title or the designation hurricane on too many storms in one of the things that willis moore wanted to do was try to avoid panicking americans of the oncoming threat but sometimes panic is necessary to get people to take the action that they should be taking. We have been talking for an hour, its been a lot of fun for me and im sure others but before we go i want you to tell us about your next book and when you expect, is is going to be two years, to your project and can you give us a little sneak peak if you will. Yes is about progress terry and, some of my ways and my other book, a lot of people call privateers who get license for governments during time of war to attack the enemys shipping, a lot of them called the license pirate, mine will strongly argue it is not a designation, they are not licensed privates and privateers during the American Revolution played a very Important Role not only within the colonies it also with respect to providing goods and giving outlet to all the sailors who were put out of work because of the onset of the American Revolution and also played a role in the outcome of the American Revolution and i think far too often history of that war discount or disparage the role of privateers and im hoping to write a history that gives them a place in honor that i truly think they deserve. Its a long list of George Washington, congress and our founding fathers, they are an integral part of the story that is too often overlooked and its going to come out and im working on it right now, you asked before my research project, i tend to do the research for the book before i write it, im just about done during most of the research for this book and i expect in the very near future to begin writing it but all handed in about 18 months, 22 months after i signed the contract and no, not next year but the year after, no, not long after book on eagles. Will then be a martin book as well . Yes. Working with bob again. He is a 18, after writing this big book on hurricanes, in writing your new book on pirate hearing you have a whole new perspective on hurricanes, they may not have if you havent written the serious guide. Given the eagerness, i dont think hurricanes are going to make an appearance in the privateering group, at least not yet, human storms. I went to the both of you, its very enlightening i cant wait to get more into the book and we will have signed copies if you would like to order just get in touch with the bookstore and eric congratulations and much luck in the future. Thank you i appreciate it, they could for inviting me. My pleasure. That you everybody for comi coming. Take care. Byebye. Weeknights this month were future book tv programs as a preview whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight we focus on biography and memoirs, first edward looks at White Supremacy through the lens of his greatgreatgrandfather a member of the ku klux klan in louisiana during the years after the civil war and biographer larry tied recounts the late republican joe mccarthy of wisconsin. In later cerebrum discusses her National Book Award Winning memoir the yellow house. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, enjoy book tv this week and every week in on cspan2. 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