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A thrilling, innovative novel about the interplay between nature and humankind by the author of Names on the Land.
With Storm, first published in 1941, George R. Stewart invented a new genre of fiction: the eco-novel. California has been plunged into drought throughout the summer and fall when a ship reports an unusual barometric reading from the far western Pacific. In San Francisco, a junior meteorologist in the Weather Bureau takes note of the anomaly and plots "an incipient little whorl" on the weather map, a developing storm, he suspects, that he privately dubs Maria. Stewart's novel tracks Maria's progress to and beyond the shores of the United States through the eyes of meteorologists, linemen, snowplow operators, a general, a couple of decamping lovebirds, and an unlucky owl, and the storm, surging and ebbing, will bring long-needed rain, flooded roads, deep snows, accidents, and death. Storm is an epic account of humanity's relationship to and dependence on the natural world.
"A massive winter storm brings destruction, peril, and death to drought-plagued California....A new introduction by Nathaniel Rich provides historical context for Stewart's reissued classic, first published in 1941. Pure excitement for eco-fiction fans." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[Stewart] presents meteorological detail with obsessive care, although not without wry humor... . By looking down on society from the height of a tempest, [Storm] frames all human and animal lives—earnest and ignorant, shaped by forces they forget to consider—as being on the same side as they strive for meaning and survival." —The New York Times Book Review
"Man versus nature, and the ability of humans to cope under environmental stress, are Stewart's two obsessions. He is at once a chronicler of the achievements and architectures of modern civilization and an ecological fatalist... . In Storm, he went so far as to write what he called a biography of the weather." —The Nation
This information about Storm was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
George R. Stewart (1895–1980) was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Princeton. He received his PhD in English literature from Columbia in 1922 and joined the English faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1924. He was a sociologist, toponymist, and founding member of the American Name Society, and the author of more than twenty books, including the highly successful novel Earth Abides and several works of American history. In addition to Storm, NYRB Classics publishes his study of American place names, Names on the Land.
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