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Edward Morris

NonfictionFamily & Relationships

Maintaining monogamy

Review by Edward Morris

Without infidelity as a theme, there would be a precipitous decline in the number of novels and movies produced, not to mention the utter destruction of country music and much of the legal profession. Whether or not one has personally been unfaithful to a romantic partner, one almost certainly knows people who have been.

As a practicing therapist for more than 30 years, Esther Perel’s goal in The State of Affairs is to go beyond the standard victim-versus-victimizer model of adultery and explore its infinite complexities—the better to salvage something even slightly worthwhile from the experience, preferably for both partners.

One reason infidelity is so catastrophic, Perel says, is that we are culturally groomed to believe marriage should provide us everything we need emotionally, including sex, offspring, friendship, stability, inspiration and refuge. When it falls short, as it almost always does for at least one of the partners, it can open the door to straying. “Not only can an affair destroy a marriage,” Perel writes, “it has the power to unravel an entire social fabric.”

But infidelity, she points out, is not all that easy to define. Depending on the aggrieved partner’s standards, it can range from flirtation or viewing pornography to maintaining a furtive, long-term romantic relationship. To illustrate how varied the “cheating” scene is, she explores the stories of dozens of couples she has counseled.

Among the conclusions she reaches are that you can’t adultery-proof a marriage, that complete honesty in trying to mend the ravages of adultery can sometimes do more harm than good, and that infidelity isn’t always caused by marital dissatisfaction. Sometimes it just happens.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Whether or not one has personally been unfaithful to a romantic partner, one almost certainly knows people who have been. As a practicing therapist for more than 30 years, Esther Perel’s goal in The State of Affairs is to go beyond the standard victim-versus-victimizer model of adultery.

NonfictionScience

A doctor’s diagnosis

Review by Edward Morris

The “hacking” Dr. Lustig refers to in The Hacking of the American Mind has nothing to do with sinister forces invading and taking over our computers. Rather, he believes that the processed food and pharmaceutical industries and their lackeys in government are doing the hacking of our bodies and minds. He also casts a wary eye on the addictive properties of technology, which, he says, is more likely to amuse than fulfill us.

A professor of pediatrics, Lustig fired his first salvo at sugar, the most pernicious ingredient in processed foods, in his 2012 bestseller, Fat Chance. He persists in his battle here against sugar here. However, Lustig’s overarching goal in The Hacking of the American Mind is to delineate the differences between mere pleasure, which is episodic and a doorway to addiction, and the more enduring state of happiness. In doing so, he begins with a discussion of the brain—its designs, functions and defenses against injury. Despite his breezy, conversational style, this early part of the book is fairly slow going.

But the remainder of his text is plainspoken observation, analysis and advice. America is suffering from a health crisis, Lustig says, principally because corporations have taken over virtually every aspect of our lives—from offering mindless entertainment, to feeding us bad food, to selling us medical insurance and supposedly life-enhancing drugs—always for private profit, never for public good. Lustig explains how Lewis Powell Jr., first as a pro-business lawyer, then as a Supreme Court justice, was instrumental in helping destroy government checks against corporate abuses, and subsequent Court decisions have continued to erode these safeguards.

The upshot, Lustig concludes, is that we are basically on our own when it comes to constructing sane and safe lives. To that end, he suggests we hold technology at arm’s length, get more sleep, do more home cooking, be more altruistic and find comfort in mindfulness and in the congenial company of others. And always avoid sugar.

The “hacking” Dr. Lustig refers to in The Hacking of the American Mind has nothing to do with sinister forces invading and taking over our computers. Rather, he believes that the processed food and pharmaceutical industries and their lackeys in government are doing the hacking of our bodies and minds. He also casts a wary eye on the addictive properties of technology, which, he says, is more likely to amuse than fulfill us.

Business & Finance

A legal odyssey

Review by Edward Morris

Ready yourself for emotional whiplash as Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, Benjamin Rachlin’s account of a man wrongly convicted of rape, seesaws from scenes of judicial haste, incompetence and indifference to episodes of sublime compassion and legal professionalism. In 1987 near Hickory, North Carolina, a 69-year-old, white widow answered a knock at her door. A black man she didn’t recognize rushed in and raped her twice before leisurely helping himself to some fruit from her kitchen and walking away. Through police negligence and mishandling of evidence, 41-year-old Willie Grimes was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life plus nine years. Although the victim identified Grimes as her attacker, her identification was contradictory, and there were no physical markers linking him to the crime.

But just when the reader is prepared to write off North Carolina as a legal snake pit, Rachlin shifts his narrative to a group of lawyers, law professors, judges and prosecutors who, on their own time, form a committee aimed at making trials fairer and freeing the innocent. They are led by Christine Mumma, who put herself through law school and has the instincts and resourcefulness of a street fighter. Together they create the Innocence Inquiry Commission, which is eventually recognized and funded by the state.

Grimes remained in various state prisons for 24 years, refusing to confess to the crime even though doing so would have led to his early release. Rachlin recounts in heartbreaking detail the physical and psychological agonies Grimes suffered before finding a measure of relief in becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. Finally, with Mumma acting as his attorney, Grimes was exonerated of all charges. Rachlin fits the North Carolina reforms into the national thrust to free the wrongly convicted, especially with the advent of DNA testing.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ready yourself for emotional whiplash as Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, Benjamin Rachlin’s account of a man wrongly convicted of rape.

NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

Be Free or Die

Review by Edward Morris

In the early morning of May 13, 1862, the side-wheel steamboat Planter left its dock in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and eased past an array of heavily armed Confederate fortifications toward the open sea. The Planter was a local vessel that regularly plied those waters. The only thing that made this morning’s passage remarkable was that the runaway slave Robert Smalls was piloting the boat. His “cargo” consisted of 15 other slaves, among them his wife and children.

It was a daring escape, minutely planned and flawlessly executed. And it was the beginning of Smalls’ life as a free man. After surrendering his craft to the Union navy, along with crucial military intelligence, he continued to serve the Union cause as a pilot and as a spokesman for black equality. Endlessly imaginative and resourceful, Smalls was able, within less than two years of his escape, to buy the “master’s house” in which he and his mother had recently been slaves. (To compound this irony, years after the war ended, he invited members of his former master’s family to his home—once theirs—for a prolonged visit. They accepted but refused to eat at the same table with his family.)

Smalls, who learned to read relatively late in life, did not leave voluminous written records behind. But in Be Free or Die, Cate Lineberry has pieced together a coherent arc of Smalls’ story through contemporary newspaper accounts—he was heralded as a hero throughout the North—military and government records and biographies of those who worked with Smalls and knew him well. Lineberry sets these collected, fascinating details into a larger narrative about how the Civil War played out in the Union-occupied coastal areas of South Carolina.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Be Free or Die chronicles the extraordinary achievements of Robert Smalls, who escaped slavery, became a Union officer and served in the House of Representatives.
Nonfiction

Laws of attraction

Review by Edward Morris

Who knew that being a dweeb in high school could have such long-lasting influence on how we see the world and how it sees us? Ultimately, how well or how badly we fit in with others, Mitch Prinstein argues in his book Popular, is the dominant factor in what we become both professionally and personally. Now a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prinstein confesses to having been a social outsider himself as a teenager—and one who, like most of us, strove mightily to achieve peer acceptance. The drive to be popular is part of our evolutionary engine, he maintains.

But popularity comes in different guises. It may arise from status (dominant personality, wealth, athletic prowess, physical beauty, extraordinary intelligence, etc.) or from simple likability (characterized by openness, friendliness, an interest in others, a willingness to share or following the rules). Of these two types, Prinstein says, “likability continues to be relevant to us throughout our lives and has been shown to be the most powerful kind of popularity there is.” Status is a shakier foundation on which to build. Indeed, he worries that the lure of status—especially the kind of easy but ephemeral visibility conferred through social media—may compromise “our ability to distinguish between good and bad.”

Obviously, we don’t begin life knowing all this. So from infancy onward, we may find ourselves socially marginalized by our physical appearance, aggressiveness, defensiveness, inability to interpret social cues or kindred forms of maladjustments. While these flaws are by no means fatal to our future success, Prinstein concludes that they will almost certainly take a toll on our health, happiness and often our professional advancement. The good news, he says, is that once we realize the negative impact these traits are exerting on us, we have ample opportunities to change how we react and, thus, make course corrections toward a sunnier horizon.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Mitch Prinstein for Popular.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Who knew that being a dweeb in high school could have such long-lasting influence on how we see the world and how it sees us? Ultimately, how well or how badly we fit in with others, Mitch Prinstein argues in his book Popular, is the dominant factor in what we become both professionally and personally.

NonfictionMilitary HistoryHistoryAmerican History

The origin story of the American military

Review by Edward Morris

America has such a long history of military readiness (some would say dominance) that it’s hard to conceive of a time when the country had no standing army at all and little public or political will to create one. That’s the period William Hogeland examines in this account of two crucial battles between American and American Indian forces, both of which took place in what is now the state of Ohio. The first was the 1791 massacre of American troops, commonly known as St. Clair’s Defeat, by a confederacy of American Indians; the second was the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, during which a trained army under General “Mad” Anthony Wayne so soundly routed the Indians that it effectively opened up the Northwest Territory to untrammeled settlement.

Resistance to the idea of building a standing army under presidential control came from members of Congress who feared concentrating that much power at the top would sow the seeds of a new form of tyranny. Better, they argued, to divide that power among the individual state militias. Wayne’s victory essentially put an end to that argument.

The story bristles with larger-than-life characters, chief among them George Washington, not just as a general and politician but as a self-interested land speculator who needed his investments protected; the relentless American Indian military leaders Little Turtle and Blue Jacket; a scheming and power-hungry Alexander Hamilton; and Mad Anthony, who finally succeeded at war after having failed at virtually everything else.

Hogeland correctly points out that St. Clair’s Defeat had far more impact on America’s development—and three times more casualties—than Sitting Bull’s victory over General Custer at the Little Big Horn. History, it appears, belongs to the best publicist.

America has such a long history of military readiness (some would say dominance) that it’s hard to conceive of a time when the country had no standing army at all and little public or political will to create one. That’s the period William Hogeland examines in this account of two crucial battles between American and American Indian forces, both of which took place in what is now the state of Ohio.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

A sweeping view of a forgotten American war

Review by Edward Morris

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities. Ironically, the conflict's leaders—General Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph—would, in the years afterward, become close, if wary, acquaintances and crucial to the heightening of each other's national reputation.

Sharfstein, a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt, begins his panoramic narrative with Howard losing his right arm to Confederate gunfire in the early days of the Civil War. Still, Howard continued to lead his troops and achieve rank. After the war, he was appointed head of the Freedmen's Bureau and charged with integrating the newly freed slaves into full citizenship. In that capacity, he established the university that still bears his name. But the resistance of white Southerners and their political allies stifled his most ambitious aims and contributed to his growing tendency to rationalize his failures, both bureaucratically and on the battle field.

Chief Joseph, as Sharfstein explains, was less a war leader than a diplomat. Long before and after the 1877 war, he argued incessantly for his tribe to be allowed to occupy its Oregon homeland rather than be harried to a reservation. However, the waves of settlers seeking to open up the resource-rich Northwest simply washed over him. Sharfstein paints his pictures of this beautiful and terrifying region on a canvas that stretches from daunting inland mountains to bustling seacoast towns.

Deftly woven into the story are portraits of such fascinating figures as Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who served as Howard's aide and later became a political radical, and the fierce warrior Yellow Wolf, whose remembered accounts of battle provide Sharfstein with some of his most chilling descriptions.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities.

NonfictionBiography

A year in the life of an icon

Review by Edward Morris

Marilyn Monroe suffered so much emotional pain throughout her life—from abused child to tormented movie star—one can only hope that 1955, the year she spent in New York, was as euphoric and productive as Elizabeth Winder portrays it in Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy. At war with her studio over the frothy movies it forced on her, Monroe and fashion photographer Milton Greene came to New York in December 1954 to set up a production company that would give the actress enough clout to choose her own roles. Monroe also wanted to immerse herself in the city’s artistic ferment and, above all else, to study at Lee Strasberg’s fabled Actors Studio, then the incubator of such radiant talents as Marlon Brando, Eli Wallach, Shelley Winters and Lou Gossett Jr. All of this she achieved.

The author bases her gossipy chronicle on having sifted through all the major Monroe-related biographies, filmed interviews about her, newspaper and magazine accounts and hundreds of photographs taken during the year in question. The effect of this accumulated minutiae is to put the reader at Monroe’s elbow as she nightclubs with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Frank Sinatra, swills champagne in bed and sits timidly at the back of the classroom as Strasberg pontificates to his more confident young lions.

The artsy crowd virtually swoons over Monroe. She enthralls the likes of Truman Capote and Carson McCullers, columnists Elsa Maxwell and Earl Wilson and even Strasberg himself, as well as the normally imperious Sir Laurence Olivier. She begins dating Arthur Miller (who emerges as something of a cold fish) and ultimately negotiates a contract with her studio that gives her story, director and cinematographer approval—plus the highest salary of any actress at that time.

With a magical year behind her, Monroe heads west, ready to give her dramatic all to a new film, Bus Stop, and what will prove to be the finest role of her career.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Marilyn Monroe suffered so much emotional pain throughout her life—from abused child to tormented movie star—one can only hope that 1955, the year she spent in New York, was as euphoric and productive as Elizabeth Winder portrays it in Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy.

Nonfiction

Retracing Snowden’s steps

Review by Edward Morris

Since the publication of Inquest, his 1966 critique of the Warren Commission’s report on the Kennedy assassination, Edward Jay Epstein has been probing events he believes were not sufficiently illuminated by the official investigations. He’s been particularly keen on examining the failures of America’s intelligence agencies, both at home and abroad. In How America Lost Its Secrets, he focuses on Edward Snowden’s massive looting and exposure of National Security Agency secrets. And, in Epstein’s mind, it does amount to looting, even though he agrees that Snowden performed a valuable service in alerting Americans to how broadly the NSA is spying on them. “Opening a Pandora’s box of government secrets is a dangerous undertaking,” he asserts.

A dogged researcher, Epstein retraces Snowden’s trajectory each step of the way from geeky teenager to opportunistic intelligence employee to celebrity whistleblower. However, Epstein doesn’t accept the widely held belief that Snowden is simply a whistleblower whose sole aim is to reveal the sinister side of America’s domestic intelligence gathering. He maintains that most of the documents Snowden copied and made public (or has threatened to make public) had to do with America’s spying on such potential adversaries as Russia and China. Further, he doesn’t believe Snowden acted alone in scooping up thousands of documents. He surmises—with some very persuasive reasoning—that Snowden must have had inside help and outside direction in deciding which intelligence files to raid. Epstein also goes to considerable lengths to explain why the government’s reliance on private, for-profit contractors to assist in its security work—such as the one that hired but failed to check out Snowden—is a built-in Achilles heel. 

In spite of the kaleidoscopic array of dates, places and characters Epstein has to deal with, his narrative is immensely readable and carries with it the dark sense of inevitability that flavors all good spy stories.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Since the publication of Inquest, his 1966 critique of the Warren Commission’s report on the Kennedy assassination, Edward Jay Epstein has been probing events he believes were not sufficiently illuminated by the official investigations. He’s been particularly keen on examining the failures of America’s intelligence agencies, both at home and abroad. In How America Lost Its Secrets, he focuses on Edward Snowden’s massive looting and exposure of National Security Agency secrets.
NonfictionMemoir

Bryan Cranston on acting and living a full life

Review by Edward Morris

Although his father was a small-time actor (with outsize dreams), Bryan Cranston didn’t pledge himself to Thespis until he was stranded for six rainy days and nights in a picnic area on the Blue Ridge Parkway with only an anthology of plays for entertainment. He was 21 at the time and had already done a smattering of amateur theater. But until this soggy epiphany broadsided him, his focus had been on a career in law enforcement.

It would be another six years of small roles and TV commercials before Cranston found steady work, acting on the ABC soap opera “Loving.” There followed such memorable mileposts as six appearances on “Seinfeld” as self-aggrandizing dentist Tim Whatley, seven seasons as the goofy dad, Hal Wilkerson, on “Malcolm in the Middle” and, most triumphantly, five seasons on “Breaking Bad” as Walter White, the emotionally defeated high school chemistry teacher turned psychopathic drug lord.

Cranston’s memoir, A Life in Parts, is an engrossing blend of stories and tricks of the acting trade. He learns to slaughter chickens, becomes a mail-order minister, motorcycles from coast to coast with his brother, barely survives a crazy girlfriend and proposes marriage in a bubble bath. And that’s just a sampling. 

He advises aspiring actors to stay busy and go the extra mile to secure and inhabit a role, noting that he took rock-climbing lessons to score a candy commercial and clothed himself in live bees for an episode of “Malcolm.” He also explains how he adopted a mindset that turns even unsuccessful auditions into personal victories and presents a numerical scale by which to judge whether or not a part is worth taking. More subtle tips abound.

While there may have been bees on Cranston, there are assuredly no flies. “I never want to limit myself,” he writes. “I want to experience everything. When I die, I want to be exhausted.”

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Although his father was a small-time actor (with outsize dreams), Bryan Cranston didn’t pledge himself to Thespis until he was stranded for six rainy days and nights in a picnic area on the Blue Ridge Parkway with only an anthology of plays for entertainment. He was 21 at the time and had already done a smattering of amateur theater. But until this soggy epiphany broadsided him, his focus had been on a career in law enforcement.
NonfictionBiography

Best friends in the White House

Review by Edward Morris

There have been earlier accounts of Eleanor Roosevelt’s long friendship with and romantic attachment to former Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok. But in Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady, author Susan Quinn draws on the more than 3,300 letters the two women wrote each other, delving deeper into their intimacy. The book also presents an inside look at the mechanics of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency as he deals with the ravages of the Great Depression and the horrors of World War II.

Assigned to cover Mrs. Roosevelt during her husband’s first run for the White House in 1932, Hickok quickly became enamored of her subject’s fierce independence and generally warm personality. Theirs was not an obvious match. Eleanor, who by this time had given birth to six children, was the patrician niece of former President Teddy Roosevelt—rich, educated abroad and sure of her place in the social firmament. Hickok—or “Hick,” as she was commonly called—had grown up impoverished and insecure in a dysfunctional family in small-town South Dakota. She had worked as a maid before finding her way into journalism and inching her way up to national prominence in that rough-and-tumble trade. Nonetheless, the two women soon found common ground—so much so that Hick resigned as a reporter, joined the new Roosevelt administration and became a semi-permanent fixture in the White House until FDR’s death in 1945.

Passionate at first and strong to the end, Eleanor and Hick’s relationship cooled gradually as the tireless first lady embraced new and more demanding reform projects and widened her circle of interesting friends. Nonetheless, Hick remained a strong influence on Eleanor, encouraging her as a writer and aiding her in her programs to help the poor and disenfranchised. Both worked valiantly to improve the lot of women and engage them in self-liberating politics. But quite apart from chronicling a beautiful and complex friendship, the author also makes a strong case here that Eleanor Roosevelt was the most politically significant first lady America has ever had.

There have been earlier accounts of Eleanor Roosevelt’s long friendship with and romantic attachment to former Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok. But in Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady, author Susan Quinn draws on the more than 3,300 letters the two women wrote each other, delving deeper into their intimacy.
NonfictionMemoir

A legendary editor recounts a life in books

Review by Edward Morris

Reading Robert Gottlieb’s literary ramblings is more fun than sitting at the elbow of legendary editor Maxwell Perkins and watching him pencil-whip Thomas Wolfe’s manuscripts into shape. A master storyteller, Gottlieb doesn’t just drop names, he cluster-bombs them. Avid Reader gets off to a rather leisurely start as he recounts his early literary enthusiasms while a student at Columbia and Cambridge. But after that, he runs full-tilt through his years mentoring authors at Simon & Schuster, Knopf, The New Yorker and then back to Knopf again as a benign éminence grise. There are also concluding sections on his years working with prominent dance companies and on his emergence as a writer with his own voice.

One of Gottlieb’s duties as an editor was coming up with titles for books and overseeing dust jacket and advertising copy. That being the case, it seems odd at first that the title for his own life story feels so tepid. But the reason soon becomes clear. Ingesting and remembering vast libraries is Gott-lieb’s hallmark. He’s a quick reader, too, he reports, a facility that has enabled him to pass sage judgment on manuscripts virtually within hours of receiving them. One of the headlines that heralded his move from Simon & Schuster blared, “Avid Reader to Head Knopf.”

Joseph Heller, Jessica Mitford, S.J. Perelman, Lauren Bacall, ex-President Bill Clinton, Katharine Hepburn, Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, John Cheever, Nora Ephron, John le Carré and Bruno Bettelheim are but a few of the literary lambs Gottlieb shepherded—and there are copious personal tales for each. 

It’s interesting to note that William Shawn, the revered New Yorker editor whom Gottlieb replaced amid staff furor, is the only person in the book to whom Gottlieb consistently assigns the honorific “Mr.” He calls Clinton “Bill.” 

 

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Reading Robert Gottlieb’s literary ramblings is more fun than sitting at the elbow of legendary editor Maxwell Perkins and watching him pencil-whip Thomas Wolfe’s manuscripts into shape.
Nonfiction

Blowin’ in the wind

Review by Edward Morris

Invisible, insistent and inevitable, wind permeates our lives and cultures—from “Blowin’ In The Wind” to Gone With The Wind, from manned flight to the Dust Bowl. Bill Streever, whose earlier dissections of nature include the books Cold and Heat, begins his narrative by citing Daniel DeFoe’s account of the massive windstorm that devastated England in 1703. Still a record-holder for ferocity, it uprooted forests, sank entire fleets of ships and made windmills spin so rapidly that the friction set them ablaze.

Throughout history, Streever observes, people have aspired to learn the composition and course of winds. They were abetted in their curiosity by such technologies as the telegraph, weather balloons, anemometers and barometers, networks of fixed and mobile weather-reporting stations, radio, automated buoys, radar, weather satellites and computers. Among the forecasting pioneers he singles out for praise are Robert FitzRoy (who captained the ship from which Charles Darwin made his discoveries), William Ferrel, James Espy, Vilhelm and Jacob Bjerknes, Lewis Fry Richardson (a Quaker who abandoned forecasting when he saw it being used as a weapon of war), Jule Charney and Edward Lorenz.

To lighten his detailed explanations of how the imperfect science of understanding winds developed, Streever intersperses them with a running, present-tense chronicle of the voyage he and his wife (or “co-captain”) made in their sailing yacht from Galveston, Texas, to Guatemala, with the two of them constituting the entire crew. As one might expect, the wind figures prominently, and sometimes ominously, in their journey.

Today, data collected and transmitted through thousands of smartphones and fed into incredibly fast computers strive to make generally reliable weather forecasts even more accurate, Streever reports. But still the wind keeps its secrets.

Invisible, insistent and inevitable, wind permeates our lives and cultures—from “Blowin’ In The Wind” to Gone With The Wind, from manned flight to the Dust Bowl. Bill Streever, whose earlier dissections of nature include the books Cold and Heat, begins his narrative by citing Daniel DeFoe’s account of the massive windstorm that devastated England in 1703. Still a record-holder for ferocity, it uprooted forests, sank entire fleets of ships and made windmills spin so rapidly that the friction set them ablaze.

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