Louisiana got lasted this past week via hurricane and i pray for everyone in lake charles and that whole area. We were speaking earlier saying they are probably going to have many weeks of not months of no power and trouble with their water system. And even people as far north as shreveport and monroe are still without power. Our thoughts go out to them. So anyway we are here today with jack davis in conversation with the author. Jack is a professor of history specializing in them for mental history and sustainability studies. Also the author of Pulitzer Prizewinning the gulf, the making of an american city. Nil in addition to the Pulitzer Prize the gulf was the news york times noted book of 2017 and made several other bestseller list that year including the Washington Post and pr in jack, welcome. Its great to have you here with us today. See my pleasure being here. Will turn to jack and eric and let them start the conversation. People have questions they can go to the chat room and we will get to the questions not during the talk but at the very and downed i encourage people to buy erics new book. We have copies her in a bookshop and you can go to our web site which is www. Garden district bookshop. Com and place an order search. We can ship looks anywhere in the country and anywhere in the world. Welcome to jack and eric. Thank you. In introducing eric i am sure you are familiar with erics work is a prolific author. He is a nonfiction writer who specializes in writing history that is really geared for the intellectually curious audience and a good narrative writer of the type of history that doesnt put you to sleep. Among his more notable books and his award among his more notable ones are leviathan and another book that i read a couple of years ago proceeding was a book about the history of pirates and that large history wasnt large enough so hes going to tackle hurricane history. I read this book and as someone who lives in florida and is familiar with hurricane history and i have known for a long time we have been due for a good look on hurricanes. Its a huge, huge topic. It are tackled it and despite it being so huge instead you can hold in your hand and its a lovely book. As i have said im really looking forward to having this conversation with eric today. I want to start by asking eric why did you decide to write this book . Why did you decide to torture so that some level trying to figure how to write this book and to bring it into something that is a huge topic and amendable one . Ive long thought about writing a book about hurricanes but the problem was i wanted to write about to hurricanes that i was the most interested in are the galveston hurricane of 1900 the great hurricane of 1938 which was long island and new england where i happen to live. But there was a problem there. Both of those have had quite a few really good books written about them. I put the ideas cited by one on two ride black flags bluewater and then came the summer and fall of 2017 the Hurricane Season from when we had hurricane harley irma and maria that destroyed different parts of the United States. So right after that season was over someone you know very well bob weil your editor and ed norton got together with bill and they thought there should be a book on americas hurricanes and he immediately thought of me because the number of my books spans centuries and i came to have a particular talent for pulling together huge amounts of information into a readable manner. They reached out to my literary agent and asked him if id be interested in writing a book about hurricanes and he in turn reached out to me and i didnt immediately said yes because before i sign onto book i have to have a vision of what that look is going to look like do know a lot about hurricanes so im off for a month and a half and i read books and articles and primary accounts of hurricanes and the whole book came into view. I said okay i will write the book and gave them the proposal and the rest is history. Hes said it had this vision of writing a book and what it would look like and as you were writing the book and completing it has that vision remained the same or have you found yourself staring off in Different Directions to make this book into what you wanted and something that feels are your reading audience . It was pretty much as i envisioned it at the outset and thats partly because when it put together a proposal i spend a lot of time taking notes and outlining where you think the book is going to go. I wont sign a book contract until im reasonably confident that ive outlined the book the way i wanted it to go. There were stories that didnt make it a book and there are other stories that i discovered along the way but believe it or not the general outline and the rough chapter outline that i chose later stays fairly positive and part of that is a function of my book tends to be chronological. Most often they marched through history in a chronological fashion. Once you know the general label land and you know its the same stories that you want to incorporate and what the main themes are then its a matter of putting flesh on the bone. There are always surprises when you write a book, lease for me. Virtually ever might books was on topics that i didnt know huge amount about before you start working on it. I did that on purpose because i had to spend almost two years working on a book. If i dont pick a topic thats going to interest me every day and the best way to do that is to pick a topic that im not an expert in so i can be surprise along the way that surprise and excitement not only fuels my work on the book but im hoping it translates to some extent to the written page. I think it does in my opinion and lets talk about the writing process itself talk about chapter outlines. Did you start with a very detailed chapter outline or are your outlines more loose and how about your research . Do you complete your research before you sit down to write or are you researching along the way . We do research very different than the way we did. Our archive is often our study with the computer in front of us. Its the times on many levels. My first book for norton was a whaling vote. I had written six or seven books before that for major publishers. The proposal for my look was all of 100 pages long various detailed outlines of the chapter and what happens since ive stayed with norton for six books they have gotten to know me and they trust me more so my proposals have overtime gotten shorter and shorter. My actual proposals for the hurricane book weighed in at 17 boldface pages so was more like an essay of what i thought the book was going to be about. I had a rough idea of some chapters so you have to have a map in order to get someplace but my map has become less and less detailed overtime and blood like to think thats in part because ive gotten better at this process and i know more quickly under the things things that i want to talk about in the book and what direction i want the book to go. And we talked about researching. Its changed tremendously. When i was starting in the late 1990s i was almost always in a Specialized Library to get the information i needed and it was rarely digitized and some of these didnt have good copy machine so i was taking a lot of hand notes which is a real problem for me because i failed handwriting in elementary school. Poor handwriting and i dont write fast so im using a typewriter and then the computer came in so i started using computers but whats happened the last 10 or 15 years as an higher seat change for so much as digitized not 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 and time digitizing some other key documents. The keystrokes i can be quickly overwhelmed with data. Ill give an example. Today i started new book on private hearings in the American Revolution and i started today. A book mentioned the privateer so i got on google and i put in his name and all of a sudden theres another document from the 1800s to the early 1900s that talked about this and i started to put together a story. In the same group of hurricanes the big problem with this book was not a lack of inspiration for the big problem was deciding the huge amount of data that was available to me. I had to make hundreds of decisions about what to leave out and what not to add. What were you looking for in a book on hurricanes that made the grade for the book and the criteria they wanted to include. What draws me the most and i sort of right books in the manner that i too. Them. The stories go the fastest and 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. I love the stories about the individuals that survive and didnt survive there is hurricanes. I love the stories of meteorologists and the other people that got swept up into the story both good and bad because i think people that gravitate most easily to stories about other human beings being put in unique situations and hurricanes certainly fill that bill but i didnt spend as much time talking about administrative stuff and regulations in that kind of stuff that i really wanted to focus on the human side of the story. Thats what i like about your book in so many other hurricane books that do that. They focus on climatology. Mine was original. Its very much a Human Interest story and i love that look. I think a book on hurricanes is right up there with the rest of them. What are some of the surprises that stand out in your mind that you might share that kept you glued to the writing. One of the big surprises are how hurricanes have affected the course of American History. In their state allowed it was fascinated to read about the 15 50s in the 1560s when the spanish were trying to settle and how the first settlement in pensacola was wiped out by a hurricane. Just think how history might have changed but that settlement had survived and also a year later on the east coast of florida there was a Battle Royale between the french and the spanish were both interested in colonizing florida and the french which had a formidable fleet was about ready to attack the spanish who had settled for little further to the south and what is now st. Augustine right at the moment when the french were getting ready to launch their attack and a hurricane comes along and basically wipes out half of the french fleet. In the spanish kill most of the french stratford submitted out of the water after the hurricane crashed their ship. I loved those stories because they. Great whatifs. What if france had settled in florida not spain . How might the history of our country have been different might there not a done a United States so that was fascinating and other stories like that. Another thing that has happened and to go back to what i said before i did know a lot about hurricanes and i certainly didnt know a lot about meteorology. The battles in the 1800s between amateur and professional meteorologists and how meteorology evolved and improved ticket or how her understanding of hurricanes evolved was just fascinating to me. The role of cuba in early hurricane science and understanding and the role of bonito binds was fascinating to hear that president mckinley said during the spanishamerican war when it started he was more afraid of what hurricanes were going to do to American Forces than any military attacks of the spanish. Every single a story in the book i was excited to read about because they were telling me about new aspects of American History and the evolution of the Hurricane Hunter plane and how the first person decided to fly into hurricane off galveston a 1940s when nobody had done it before and how sputnik led to the ultimate creation of satellites in the new creation of weather satellites and still today with all of our technology and all of our ability to watch a hurricane from inception to dissolution to understand how much uncertainty there still is. The computer model can only take you so far and 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 could have gone 15 miles in either direction in the story might have been quite different that the storm surge might have reached 20 feet so was up until the last moment when landfall occurs. There was no question about where was going to occur and what the ultimate attack was going to be. Thats the notion of how hurricanes affect history. Its just the vagaries of meteorological hap stance and the hurricane had jobs 20 or 30 miles this direction versus that direction just think how different it would be and look at new orleans were 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 it had given new orleans a direct hit. That might in a very different story in believe it or not and even worse story than what came out of it. When did hurricane forecast really become decent . For many years of course the u. S. Weather service was incompetent when it came to forecasting and tracking hurricanes. Is there a particular point when the u. S. Government meteorologists really became expert and reliable . Really has to do with their ability to get the eyes on the storm. Wiki advent of radio there was the opportunity for sending in reports to meteorologists on the land. They got information was sent over by telegraph in their early years and telephones later on. But really it starts to change fundamentally in the 1940s and 50s when the Hurricane Hunter planes came on line. When the hurricane got within a a of the plane and im ready and to see what it was doing and send instruments into the hurricane and relay that information back to meteorologists on the land and their ability to track the hurricanes was much improved. When satellites, as a whole different ballgame. You can literally watch her hurricane dissolve in cs at goes across the planet or through the caribbean and the gulf coast and never lose sight of it are no longer can we be completely surprised by hurricanes and adding to that not only were we able to see them and gathered data on them but with sophisticated computerized weather prediction models we started to come on line in the 1980s and greatly improved and we had the added piece of the armament for the meteorologists to take all the data they are collecting in real time at bat to their historical understanding of hurricanes and hurricane tracks and give us a much better idea of where this hurricane is going how powerful its likely to be and therefore what kinds of protections and what kinds of steps we need to take to deal with this before it actually arrives. The arc of our understanding of hurricanes are meteorological understanding and their ability to track them as they evolve and move across the globe is just night and day compared to what it was just 50 years ago or 100 years ago certainly so we are fortunate and that doesnt reduce the impact of the hurricane. One of the annoying things is there is nothing we can do as human beings to avert their strike could all weekend do is better plan and prepare and deal with the aftermath. And a history of such of yours where you were dealing with the Human Interest story obviously sometimes there are heroic figures that standout and one in mind is nash roberts the longtime there on hurricanes. He didnt trust the u. S. Weather service and he never used technology. He used a squeaky marker on a white ward. Where there was forecasters or particular hurricane that would save lives. At the end of june and basically level for that individual is a start the book out with, the doctor clark and his wife sybil. Sheila clinic and cameron and during the height of the hurricane he left his house and he left behind his wife, three of its youngest children and their made to go into the clinic to help the patients who were there and anybody who might ke becoming and after the hurricane. He did not make it to the clinic. His car got thrown off the road by water. And he sheltered with a family not too far from his home. He survived. He came out of the house the next morning and people crowded around him. Calvin him. Because it was a local doctor and the big him to go to Cameron Parish courthouse were any people who were injured needed to be tended to. He was torn. Because he had no idea what happened to his wife sybil and his three children and is made. He had no idea. Yet he decided because of his professional responsibility and the oath that he took his patients that he was going to go to the courthouse. Names going to tend to them and he did. And i wasnt help any hours later, more than a day actually that he found out that his wife had survived during the storm but his three youngest children in the made had been killed. And he was given all sorts of awards and called a hero which he truly was but a brush that all the side and said i was just doing what was asked of me. I was being responsible. And i respect other people i would expect them to do the same. But he is certainly one of the heroes of the needs of others above the needs of himself. In another similarly placed hero was clara barton during this hurricane of 1893. They killed maybe as any as 3000 people. And what we didnt have machinery or a mechanism for helping people after hurricanes. She and her relatively new american red cross, volunteers they swept into the islands offshore at South Carolina and she helped those people during their time of greatest need. They started planning and feeding themselves and one other story the came out of the hurricane and 81893 which i love you, is dunbar davis. He was a lifesaver in oak island North Carolina, a lifesaving station. And after the hurricane, he basically went without sleep for almost 35 hours. In a span, he saved nearly 20 mariners her ships had gotten just offshore. They brought them back to the lifesaving station. Then finally he got to take an app at the end of that or dale. Is another hero. Things are any harrows. And in new orleans, during Hurricane Katrina who any people came in to help out. One of the most interesting was occasioned navy. All of this people with airboats. In louisiana they came down to new orleans and they helped to save 10000 people over the span of a week or two. And i think in my eyes, they are heroes as well. My