The Weather Factor: How Nature Has Changed History

by Erik Durschmied

Book Overview

From the doomed campaigns of Roman legions and Napoleon to the fate of U.S. forces in the South Pacific and Vietnam, torrential rain, brutal winters, monster typhoons, and killer hurricanes have had... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559705582
• ISBN13: 9781559705585
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Arcade Pub
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Climate is different than weather

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.

Everybody talks about it ,but......

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.

Interesting take on weather and military history

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.

How human destiny is often determined by the elements

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.