In this series of sprightly essays Lee presents an intriguing look at how atmospheric conditions have affects history.

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Product Description

An amazing, enlightening, and endlessly entertaining look at how weather has shaped our world.

Throughout history, great leaders have fallen, the outcomes of mighty battles have been determined, and the tides of earth-shattering events have been turned by a powerful, inscrutable force of nature: the weather. In Blame It on the Rain, author Laura Lee explores the amazing and sometimes bizarre ways in which weather has influenced our history and helped to bring about sweeping cultural change. She also delights us with a plethora of fascinating weather-related facts (Did you know that more Britons die of sunburn every year than Australians?), while offering readers a hilarious overview of humankind's many absurd attempts to control the elements.

• If a weather-produced blight hadn't severely damaged French vineyards, there might never have been a California wine industry. . . .

• What weather phenomenon was responsible for the sound of the Stradivarius?

• If there had been a late autumn in Russia, Hitler could have won World War II. . . .

• Did weather play a part in Truman's victory over Dewey?

Eye-opening, edifying, and totally unexpected, Blame It on the Rain is a fascinating appreciation of the destiny-altering vagaries of mother nature—and it's even more fun than watching the Weather Channel!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #436879 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-01
• Released on: 2006-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060839826
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this series of sprightly essays Lee presents an intriguing look at how atmospheric conditions have affected a range of historical events, while acknowledging that other factors were important as well. Lee (100 Most Dangerous Things in Everyday Life) argues that, because of the weather's impact, we have less control over events than we think. She theorizes that Greek culture survived a Persian attack in the 480 B.C. battle of Salamis because of naval commander Thermistocles' excellent knowledge of wind currents. In another chapter, Lee vividly describes the 1415 battle of Agincourt, where England's Henry V pitted his exhausted and badly outnumbered army against the French as relentless rain turned the war arena into a mud field. Henry dispatched his archers to force the opposition onto the deadly battleground, where horses and riders collapsed, giving the young king a decisive victory. Elsewhere Lee recounts how in 1800 a storm flooded bridges and roads, disrupting a potential slave uprising in Virginia, while another torrential rainstorm finally delivered water to Civil War prisoners dying of thirst at the notorious prison camp, near Andersonville, Ga. Lee presents intriguing browsing items for history buffs. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Much like the '80s breakup song with the same title, this book chronicles how bad weather has affected mankind, most notably in times of war. Starting with prehistoric man, each chapter chronicles a different event, from Noah's flood to missile launches during the Cold War, including the Wright brothers' first flight and the D-Day Invasion. Chapters may be read individually or collectively. Students will enjoy Lee's concise, conversational style and the quirky relationship she identifies between humans and the forces of nature.–Brigeen Radoicich, Fresno County Office of Education, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Laura Lee's Blame It on the Rain is nothing if not timely: summer of 2005, Hurricane Katrina; summer of 2006, floods and a nationwide oven. Also the author of The Pocket Encyclopedia of Aggravations, Lee gets down to business in her introduction, foreshadowing the two Russian-winter set pieces that make her best case for weather as a history-changing force: 1812 and 1941. In 1812, she writes, "The one thing that Napoleon had failed to consider became abundantly clear: Russia can get very, very cold." A century and some years later, she adds, Hitler found out that low mercury isn't always the worst of it. "Just as the cold began to abate, the Germans encountered another Russian weather phenomenon, the rasputitsa . . . the time of year when snow melts and the roads become an impassable quagmire." The results in each case were a failed invasion, a devastated army and a "turning point" in the war, and Lee has rung her not terribly controversial theme: Great men's best-laid plans can be tripped up by weather.

Certain details in the Russian examples may be novel, but these are familiar stories, and there's more where they came from in Blame It on the Rain, including the Little Ice Age that put an end to Viking occupation of Greenland (readers of Jared Diamond's Collapse will nod in recognition), the Protestant wind that saved England from the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the downpour that exacerbated the Union soldiers' helplessness after the Battle of Fredericksburg. But the value of this bouncy book lies in its lesser-known examples, along with some forays outside the worlds of war and politics.

Lee maintains, for example, that there was a second Protestant wind, which not only blew William and Mary from Holland to England in 1688 but also kept English ships full of defenders from intercepting them. The air currents had been fickle for days before the coup (Lee characterizes them as by turns "popish" and "agnostic"), but then they got serious and blew Catholicism, in the person of King James II, virtually off the island.

Much later, Lee takes us to Finland, which hoped to out-Russia Russia with freezing weather when the Soviets attacked in 1939. Ultimately, the Soviets prevailed, but not before the Finns put up a fierce defense, which included inventing and making ample use of the Molotov cocktail, named "after the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Vyacheslav Molotov," who was said by Winston Churchill to have the "smile of Siberian winter."

Among the non-military chapters is one about a painting, Edvard Munch's much-reproduced "The Scream," in which the screamer's horrified visage is accentuated by the "swirling, fire-red sky" at his back. This effect, Lee reasons, came courtesy of a volcanic eruption on Krakatau, an island that lies between Java and Sumatra. Lurid sunsets, caused by dust and ash spewed into the air and wafted around the world, also influenced other artists, including American painter Frederic Church and English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. Lee goes on to note: "Some believe the Krakatau sunsets, or a similar effect produced by another storm, may have been responsible for the visions [i.e., strange clouds and flashes of light] of pilgrims who came to a field in Fátima, Portugal" in 1917.

Such material is engaging and new (to this reader, at any rate), and there's more. During World War II, Lee observes, baseball announcers were supposed to fudge the explanation when a game was rained out lest our enemies find out too much about American weather. And it's interesting to learn that elderly citizens of Kokura, Japan, which an overcast sky saved from being a target for an atomic bomb in August of 1945, meet every year "on that fateful day to . . . celebrate the clouds that spared so many of their lives."

Occasionally, Lee makes too much of the weather. I wasn't persuaded by her suggestion that a storm sealed the fate of Robespierre by keeping his partisans from gathering and rallying on his behalf. Her writing can be excessively perky, too, as in this passage from a chapter on the settlement of the New World: "There was a big bang. On second thought, perhaps we don't need to go to the very beginning. Let's begin our story with a solar system that already exists." And she seems to have declared war on the indicative mood, preferring again and again to tell us that something "eventually would" happen, rather than simply that it did.

Lee may be no stylist, but she has gathered a welter of old and new material into a fast-paced little number that should help you get through a seasonal doldrum or two.

Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.