Thanks for kicking this thread back to the top of the timeline Jeff. Reminds me that I intended to post my Amazon review here but never did. Here it is:
I have been a recreational storm chaser for 22 years and for that reason was initially a little leery about the book. I have found that many non-technical books about tornado outbreaks, storm chasing, etc. written for a general audience are either too limited and/or inaccurate from a meteorological perspective to be satisfying to a storm chaser, and/or are written for a niche audience of storm enthusiasts and lacking any literary chops, sometimes even bordering on the cheesy side. I am happy to say that my concerns were completely unfounded in this case. Hargrove succeeded in writing a book that has literary chops, while also having enough meteorological meat to satisfy this storm chaser. Hargrove also successfully captures the essence of storm chasing. (I had read online in a storm chasing discussion group that Hargrove is a storm chaser; in reality I think he just participated on some storm chases as part of his research for the book).
Although I have been a chaser for a long time, and interested in severe weather for an even longer period, I did not know much about Tim Samaras’s life. Believe it or not, for several reasons I never watched more than an episode or two of “Storm Chasers.” I was generally aware of Tim’s work from other sources, but always had a vague (and, in retrospect, erroneous) impression that he was somewhat on the fringe of “real” science. From the book, I now understand where this impression came from; in some ways it was based on reality (i.e., Tim not having the academic pedigree and facing his own challenges with being accepted by the scientific community; forming his own TWISTEX group rather than participating in Project VORTEX), but I also understand more about why he was “on his own” (I appreciated the background on Tim’s conflicts with Josh Wurman and how TWISTEX came to exist outside of VORTEX) and simultaneously gained a greater appreciation for Tim’s very real and significant scientific contributions.
I’m no literary expert but I do read a fair bit and thought Hargrove’s writing was very good. I especially enjoyed some of his evocative prose on what it is like to be in a storm environment and chasing on the Great Plains, although at times it seemed he was trying too hard to use flowery prose or find an unusual synonym in the thesaurus. But that is a small criticism. I found the meteorological aspects of the book to be generally accurate. Of course, as a chaser I would have loved to have even more such content, but of course it’s not intended to be a textbook or technical case study. I think it’s just the right amount of science for a mainstream audience, and in that regard it neither dumbs it down nor leaves too much out even from a chaser’s perspective. The final El Reno chase is rendered in good detail and faithfully recreates the day from what I have studied of it (I was not chasing that day, although I wish I had been) and does a good job putting the reader in the doomed car with Tim, Carl and Paul.
One thing that would have been helpful is if the book had added for reference a map of the El Reno road network and the tornado’s path. I have studied both from other sources, and they are of course available easily enough online for those who are interested, but it would have been convenient to have them in the book to easily visualize and relate the narrative of that chase, especially since the road options, dead end at the El Reno airport, etc. were so pivotal to the fatal outcome.
