If you are interested in joining us for a virtual book discussion, please email: director@natickhistoricalsociety.org.

Everyone is welcome to join a discussion of Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (2000) by Erik Larson.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based, was to him preposterous, "an absurd delusion." It was 1900, a year when America felt bigger and stronger than ever before.

That year, Galveston would endure a hurricane that to this day remains the nation's deadliest natural disasters. In Galveston alone at least 6,000 people, possibly as many as 10,000, would lose their lives. Meticulously researched and vividly written, Isaac's Storm is based on Cline's own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows and whys of great storms. Ultimately, however, it is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets nature's last great uncontrollable force. As such, Isaac's Storm carries a warning for our time.

This program is co-sponsored with the Bacon Free Library. It is FREE and open to the public.