Synopses & Reviews
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.
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.
Review
“Beautiful and totally original.” Elizabeth Kolbert
Review
“Lauren Redniss’s Thunder & Lightning is such a strange and
wonderful thing, the work of a first-class mind that refuses to submit
to any categories or precedent. It’s the way you wish science would
always be taught — with a mix of stories and facts, legend and hard
science.” Dave Eggers
Review
“In Thunder & Lightning, Lauren 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
Review
“Lauren 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. Thunder & Lighting
is a fascinating meditation on how climate affects the earth’s
landscape and the lives inhabiting it, but also how the landscape of a
book — the layout of its text, the images on its pages — impacts the telling
of a story. This is an important book about a topic that couldn’t be
more important to us all.” Rebecca Skloot
About the Author
Lauren Redniss is the author of Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies and Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, a finalist for the National Book Award. She teaches at Parsons the New School for Design.