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Books by Lee Sandlin

Storm Kings

In Storm Kings, Lee Sandlin retraces America's fascination and unique relationship to tornadoes and the weather. From Ben Franklin's early experiments, to "the great storm debates" of the nineteenth century, to heartland life in the early twentieth century, Sandlin shows how tornado chasing helped foster the birth of meteorology, recreating with vivid descriptions some of the most devastating storms in America's history, including the "Tri-State tornado" of 1925 and the Peshtigo "fire tornado," whose deadly path of destruction was left encased in glass. Drawing on memoirs, letters, eyewitness testimonies, and numerous archives, Sandlin brings to life the forgotten characters and scientists--like James Espy, America's first meteorologist and Corporal John Park Finley, who helped place a network of weather "spotters" across the country--that changed a nation, detailing the almost invisible history of The National Weather Service, the settling of the Midwest, and how successive generations came to understand and finally coexist with the spiraling menace that could erase lives and whole towns in an instant.

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Wicked River

A riveting narrative look at one of the most colorful, dangerous, and peculiar places in America's historical landscape: the strange, wonderful, and mysterious Mississippi River of the 19th century. FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK. VINTAGE.

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