used weather to their advantage in past wars and how they manipulated it. War and Profit, separate chapters but related, were also good ones. Redniss talks about Diana Nyad’s impressive attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida in September 2010 when Nyad was 60 years old and also how “winds can shape the personality of a place.” Redniss includes an excerpt from Herman Hesse’s 1904 novel Peter Camenzind, in which Hesse’s protagonist describes the Fohn, “a dry, down-slope wind notorious in Central Europe.” That excerpt made me want to read Peter Camenzind and experience that wind, though I’m sure I won’t like it. The chapter on Wind was also interesting. “You get pretty itchy after a while and you start doubting yourself.” - Paul Bowering You’re waiting and you’re looking.” - Captain David Fowler “Moisture from the air condenses into tiny water droplets, or ice crystals, that hover over earth’s surface.” I also learned “fog is a cloud near the ground,” which is obvious now that I know, but I’ve never thought of it that way before. I also liked the chapter on Fog, partly because I love it when outside is foggy, because I learned about Cape Spear and sailors’ use of foghorns and lighthouses to navigate in thick fog. It’s one of the most interesting places I learned about in this book. Svalberg was nationless until 1920 when the Spitsbergen Treaty made it a territory of Norway. Of the chapters, one of my favorites was Cold because I learned about Svalbard, “a place that is entirely hostile to agriculture, inhospitable to life in almost every form” but is the “ideal spot for protecting the world’s harvest.” It houses the Global Seed Vault, which stores seeds from all over the world just in case something catastrophic happens and we have to replant every damn thing. Navy during the Vietnam War: “He flew dozens of cloud-seeding missions in Southeast Asia in 19.” She also includes stories of people’s personal experiences, like Ben Livingston, who was a cloud physicist for the U.S. Redniss not only explains the chapter’s subject, but also explains its relation to the concept of weather and presents facts and sometimes data about it. Actually, one of them has no words at all. Chapter lengths vary and some have more text than others. The book is divided into 12 chapters, all headed by subjects that affect or relate to weather (rain, fog, war, profit, etc.).
There’s a lot to read, but the amount of text isn’t overpowering since they are interspersed with illustrations and the font size allows for easy reading. The book is huge and thick, but that’s because of the large, beautiful illustrations that are sometimes spread across two pages. It was an informative, thought-provoking read that left me curious about some of the subjects, places, and people mentioned in the book. Written and illustrated by Lauren Redniss, the book explores how weather affects nature and humanity and how humans cause changes in the weather. Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future is an illustrated nonfiction book about the weather that I recently read.
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