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by: Mark Svenvold
List Price: $26.00Amazon.com's Price: $5.99 You Save: $20.01 (77%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 551.553
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Henry Holt and Co.
Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: May 10, 2005
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Release Date: April 14, 2005
Sales Rank: 957947
Studio: Henry Holt and Co.
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Following an eccentric band of storm chasers during tornado season, a writer delves deep into our fascination with catastrophic weather
Why do some people chase the kind of storms that would send most people running for their lives? Why is it that devastating weather-and tornadoes in particular-maintain a primal hold on our collective imagination? How to account for the spectacular success of a company like the Weather Channel-not just a show, but an entire cable network with 86 million regular viewers, hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, and one abiding subject, the passing clouds?
With his guide Matt Biddle, an Ahab-like veteran storm chaser, Mark Svenvold draws a portrait of a culture enamored by extremes during a 6,000-mile journey through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. Along the way, the author encounters an assortment of characters out of a Fellini film: A duo named The Twister Sisters, from St. Cloud, Minnesota; a crowd-pleasing trio from CUPP (California University of Pennsylvania-at Pittsburgh); a team of chaser-scientists who have partnered with an IMAX film-maker from Los Angeles with an armor-plated truck; and a stock car racer from North Carolina whose goal is to drive through a tornado.
At the heart of the excitement are the awe-inspiring events themselves-a tornado that levels a small Nebraska town and the look back at the central Oklahoma tornado outbreak that included the single-most destructive tornado in US history. Similar weather disasters occur each spring in a kind of reverse lottery that has spawned a subculture of catastrophilia. Want to know what a tornado actually sounds like as it blows over or through your house? Big Weather answers this while also tracing the ways the sublime, in the classic sense, still has a profound claim upon our imagination.
Big Weather is a wryly observed meditation upon the weather as block-buster event that explores, with an ironic touch, our paradoxical relationship to the biggest story of our age-global warming-and the fate of the earth.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Poetic prose, wide ranging topics
Big Weather is a lot about weather and a little about weather, all at the same time. How come? Because Mark Svenvold can describe physical phenomena in prose approaching poetry, and the topic allows him to introduce the reader to multiple other venues.
The title attracts those of us who need to deal with weather. I fly light airplanes and taught weather as a major chapter in aviation ground school class curricula. Even so, tornadoes are a fish pilots do not swim with. We race the other way, ... Read More
Rating:  - Fascinating topic, ho-hum execution
In "Big Weather," Mark Svenvold recalls the time he spent in 2004 tagging along with veteran storm chaser Matt Biddle. The book is meant to be about storm chaser culture and associated elements, but uneven storytelling mars what would otherwise be a very cool book.
Svenvold is a poet-in-residence at Fordham University, and it shows. In some cases (such as Chapter 4: Catastrophilia), it shows a little too much. When Svenvold is talking about being on a chase, or the people who are part ... Read More
Rating:  - Supposed to be About WEATHER
Big Weather? WRONG!!!! This guy covers philosophy, map making,religion, his philosophical ideas to the point of nausea, old world history, pages & pages about Mary MacLane, oh yeah, and almost as an afterthought there are some pages about weather & chasing. But still laced with his philosophy.
NOT a book for anyone except maybe self styled "intellectuals"
Rating: - Big Weather? Big Waste!!!
Skip this one. It's horrible. I bought it just before a long flight and didn't have anything else to read. "I chose poorly."
What kind of author involves his political views and disdain for Christianity in a book called Big Weather? Well, Mark Svenvold does. For your money, you get a big dose of Svenvold's personal philosophies packaged with a backdrop of high brow cultural references. Who is this guy? And, why should we listen to his rambling pontifications? I thought I was buying ... Read More
Rating:  - Good Writing - Minimal Adventure
I'm very into the weather and have chased a storm or two in my exciting lifetime. Nevertheless, I am always interested in reading about the death defying adventures of other lunatics and thought this book would be just the thing. I've read Svenvold before (some book about a singular lunatic) and he writes with some degree of skill. Now...for this book.
The author covers the exploits of several tornado chasers over a month. The adventure writing is minimal as the author spends too much time ... Read More
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