**From the National Book Award finalist Lauren Redniss, author of
Radioactive, comes a dazzling fusion of storytelling, visual art, and
reportage that grapples with weather in all its dimensions: its danger
and its beauty, why it happens and what it means.
**
WINNER OF THE PEN/E. O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD - NAMED
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, KIRKUS
REVIEWS, AND SHELF AWARENESS
Weather is the very air we breathe--it shapes our daily lives and alters
the course of history. In Thunder & Lightning, Lauren Redniss tells
the story of weather and humankind through the ages.
This wide-ranging work roams from the driest desert on earth to a frigid
island in the Arctic, from the Biblical flood to the defeat of the
Spanish Armada. Redniss visits the headquarters of the National Weather
Service, recounts top-secret rainmaking operations during the Vietnam
War, and examines the economic impact of disasters like Hurricane
Katrina. Drawing on extensive research and countless interviews, she
examines our own day and age, from our most personal decisions--Do I
need an umbrella today?--to the awesome challenges we face with global
climate change.
Redniss produced each element of Thunder & Lightning the text, the
artwork, the covers, and every page in between. She created many of the
images using the antiquated printmaking technique copper plate
photogravure etching. She even designed the book's typeface.
The result is a book unlike any other: a spellbinding combination of
storytelling, art, and science.
Praise for Thunder & Lightning
"[An] aesthetically charged and deeply researched account . . . a wild
rainstorm of a book, pelting the reader with ideas and
inspiration."--Nature
"A gorgeous and illuminating illustrated study of weather in all its
tempestuous variety . . . Redniss's combo of fact, folklore, and vibrant
etched copperplate prints enthralls."--O: The Oprah Magazine
"Eerily beautiful . . . Contains plenty of scientific explanation
(including more than a few nods toward global warming), but also
far-flung personal stories that illuminate the beauty, wonder and chaos
inherent in the elements."--The New York Times
"Magical . . . Redniss has . . . shown us how human beings live with
nature--fighting, coexisting, taming, predicting via leech barometer and
radar and intuition."--The New York Times Book Review
"[A] twenty-first-century genius . . . Redniss is inventing a new
literary genre. . . . The reader willing to put herself fully in
Redniss's hands will be rewarded with a delicious feeling of being
enveloped by a phenomenon that eclipses the chiming trivialities of
daily life."--Elle
"Lends a graphic-novel-like allure to some of nature's most curious
paradoxes."**--*Vogue
"Redniss is one of the most creative science writers of our time--her
combination of beautiful artwork, reporting, and poetic prose brings
science to life in ways that words alone simply cannot."--Rebecca
Skloot
"Redniss combines her own dual punch of expressive art and impressive
erudition to give an entirely new take on all that happens above our
heads. This is an illuminated book that is also an illuminating
one."--Adam Gopnik
"A strange and wonderful thing, the work of a first-class mind that
refuses to submit to any categories or precedent."--Dave Eggers
"Beautiful and totally original."--Elizabeth Kolbert
