Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the uncontrollable force of nature.

September 8, 1900, began innocently in Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline. resident meteorologist for the U.S.Weather Bureau, failed to grasp the meaning of the deep-seaswells and winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself engulfed by a monster hurricane that destroyed the town and killed over 6,000 people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of adevastating personal tragedy.