“Hurricanes whip up the seas, generate gargantuan waves and mammoth storm surges, and pour down such diluvial quantities of water that they seem to presage the end of time.” As the subtitle promises, the book starts 500 years ago, on Christopher Columbus’s fourth trip to the New World. Understanding a phenomenon and protecting oneself from it are two different things,” writes Dolin. The best preparation needs foreknowledge of trouble, and quality weather forecasting requires a distributed network of people who can communicate observations quickly. “Seen from space,” Dolin writes, “hurricanes are one of the most beautiful and mesmerizing features in the world. Racing around the globe like downy, spinning pinwheels floating silently above the Earth, their very magnificence belies their dreadful impact on American history.”