2020 Gold Award winner: Best regional book in the nation! (Chosen by more than 160 librarians, booksellers and design and editorial experts nationwide in the 32nd annual Benjamin Franklin Book Awards)
This new and expanded edition of a “history of wild weather on the Jersey Shore...with harrowing eyewitness accounts” (Booklist) now includes Superstorm Sandy and even more weather.
Illustrated with nearly 300 photographs, engravings and graphics, this large-format book is filled with vivid personal accounts from storm survivors. Covering the earliest recorded storms through the devastating March '62 northeaster, the 1944 hurricane, December 1992's extreme northeaster and Superstorm Sandy, this “bible of Jersey Shore storms” also touches upon the mythic nature of great storms and looks at the environmental implications of coastal living.
With added color photographs, more storms, and updated information, record tides and storm tracks, this new edition includes an Afterword about climate change, sea level rise, and the future of the coast. It is a must for every Shore resident’s library.
THE BOOK
This is a book about living on the edge. It is a book of survival stories — gripping accounts from those who have experienced major storms along the New Jersey Shore, woven together with contemporary news and you-are-there reports.
Originally published in 1993, this expanded second edition includes an extensive chapter on Superstorm Sandy, the most destructive storm to strike the region in generations. But readers who know only of Sandy may be amazed by the stories of the Shore’s historic storms, especially the hurricane of 1944 or the March northeaster of 1962. Before modern building codes, flood insurance, evacuation orders, or reliable forecasts, these epic storms were as completely devastating.
This new edition updates other coastal weather events from recent years. And because development at the Jersey Shore continues apace — driven by a never-fading desire to live by the ocean, at a time when the climate is changing and the seas are rising — an afterword on the future of the Shore has been added.
Great Storms of the Jersey Shore is dramatically illustrated with nearly 300 photographs, engravings, and graphics. Reproduced here, these images take on new life and provide a window through which we can view the past and appreciate both the horror and beauty of nature unleashed.
Within these pages the voices of those who have known the power of great coastal storms draw us in to a time and place where survival is uncertain. For those who have experienced such storms — as their stories reveal in this book — it is a defining moment in their lives.
