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10 Books for People Who Like Weather and History
Add these books to your yearly reading list!
The new year brings a blank slate for book reading lists — a time to invite challenges, swap recommendations with friends, and reset books-read counts for the year. Weather makes for a compelling story. It’s impactful, it’s dramatic, and it’s universal. Everyone talks about the weather, and everyone experiences weather, even if they haven’t experienced weather THIS bad. Books about big weather events of the past are both gripping and instructive, leaving readers entertained and enlightened by the science, the human stories, the history, and often, the politics surrounding an event. If you’re looking for a high-quality work, here are 10 of my favorites, along with a bunch of honorable mentions.
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1. The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin
If you liked the fictional The Children’s Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin, then you’ll love the source of much of her factual background. Laskin brings the people alive in his own right, from the meteorologists to the teachers and children caught in the storm. His account of the blizzard and its aftermath is harrowing and rich.
2. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan
If you were intrigued by the fictional The Four Winds by Kirstin Hannah or The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, you simply must read The Worst Hard Time. Egan elegantly weaves together the narratives of dozens of people dispersed through the heart of the Dust Bowl region, as well as the government officials, snake oil salesmen, and other key figures to the Dust Bowl. Egan highlights the layering of weather, climate, and ecological disasters that caused the hardships and deaths of so many Americans, the lessons learned and the ones that are already being forgotten today.
