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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorBlizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917
Sally M. Walker · 151 pages
Recounts the story from World War I in which two towns were leveled and almost two thousand people killed following the collision of two warships in Halifax Harbour and a blizzard that dumped over a foot of snow in the area.
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
John M. Barry · 528 pages
In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. Close to a million people - in a nation of 120 million - were forced out of their homes. Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands.
The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche
Gary Krist · 315 pages
"In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard hit Washington State. High in the Cascade Mountains near the tiny town of Wellington, two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found their railcars buried in rising drifts, parked precariously on the edge of a steep ravine. An army of the Great Northern Railroad's men worked round-the-clock to rescue the trains, but the storm was unrelenting
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
Erik Larson · 385 pages
"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 fel
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Sebastian Junger · 256 pages
It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high --- a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm." When it struck in October 1991, there was a virtually no warning. "She's comin; on, boys, and she's comin' on strong." radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrew Gail off the coast of Nova Scotia, and soon afterward th
Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894
Daniel James Brown · 296 pages
The Storm of the Century: Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900
Al Roker, William Hogeland
The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue
Michael Tougias, Casey Sherman · 224 pages
Look no further for the real-life adventure of the year! The Finest Hours is a rousing page-turner, a fascinating history, and an inspiring ode to the courage and professionalism of men who face bitter winds and black mountainous seas... all to do a dangerous job. Put it on the shelf next to The Perfect Storm. That's where it belongs -- William Martin, New York Times Best Selling author of Cape Co
A Night to Remember
Walter Lord · 209 pages
She was the world's biggest-ever ship. A luurious miracle of twentieth-century technology, the Titanic was equipped with the most ingenious safety devices of the time. Yet on a moonlit night in 1912, the "unsinkable" Titanic raced across the glassy Atlantic on her maiden voyage, with only twenty lifeboats for 2,207 passengers. A Night to Remember is the gut-wrenching, minute-by-minute account of h
Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea
Michael Tougias · 247 pages
A true story of catastrophe and survival at sea. One November morning in 1980, two small lobster boats set out for Georges Bank, a bountiful but perilous fishing ground 130 miles off the Massachusetts coast. The forecast was for typical fall weather--but a colossal storm was brewing to the southeast, a maelstrom the National Weather Service did not accurately locate until the boats were already in
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer · 371 pages
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10,1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin the perilous descent from 29,028 feet (roughly the cruising altitude of an Airbus jetliner), twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly to the top, unaware that the sky had b
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
Timothy Egan · 336 pages
Narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire of August, 1910, and Teddy Roosevelt's pioneering conservation efforts that helped turn public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.
A Crack in the Edge of the World
Simon Winchester · 462 pages
Eye of the Storm
Kate Messner · 298 pages
Jaden's summer visit with her meteorologist father, who has just returned from spending four years in Russia conducting weather experiments not permitted in the United States, fills her with apprehension and fear as she discovers that living at her father's planned community, Placid Meadows, is anything but placid.
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
Wallace Stegner · 438 pages
Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
Tim Butcher · 363 pages
The author recounts his audacious and perilous quest through the Congo as he retraced the 1874 expedition of explorer H. M. Stanley to map the Congo River, traveling alone with an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and dugout canoe, and aided by characters ranging from U.N. aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Nathaniel Philbrick · 320 pages
In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage to hunt whales. Fifteen months later, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale.
Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938
R.A. Scotti · 296 pages
The massive destruction wreaked by the Hurricane of 1938 dwarfed that of the Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, and the Mississippi floods of 1927, making the storm the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Now, R.A. Scotti tells the story. Hurricane was a foreign word in New England then. People didn't know how to pronounce it. They didn't know what it meant, and whatever it meant,
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann · 339 pages
A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker wr
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
Stephen Puleo · 273 pages
Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window. "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank fille
Condominium
John D. MacDonald · 451 pages
Amazing. John D. MacDonald wrote this book about shyster real estate developers as a tribute to the many friends he lost in a hurricane due to that very circumstance. The term "blockbuster" is used all too often, but this book truly is. John had enormous talent, he was angry, and he was highly eloquent. It may be the most impeccably crafted book I have ever read, and has a permanent place on m