Great history book about hurricanes

I found this book a little hard to get into at first but once it started to get to chapter 3 or so it became gripping. I would have preferred some detail about the Native American perspective on hurricanes as the early chapters were quite focused around the American colonists. However, I really liked the stories about the individual hurricanes and how the scientists gradually discovered more about them. It was interesting to learn about the rivalries towards the scientists and I enjoyed the story of how the first hurricane hunter plane was developed after a rivalry between US and UK pilots in the war. It was horrible to hear about how much of a role racism played in how hurricane survivors were treated and how it took so long for some black survivors to get a decent burial, over 70 years later. Once the story started talking about Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina, it was clear that some of these issues were still the same and the US government made mistakes in the response, some avoidable and others less so. Overall it was a really well researched and balancrf account. It really shows how the history of the US is intertwined with the history of hurricanes.

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