Wind: How the Flow of Air Has Shaped Life, Myth, and the Land

Explores the qualities and roles of wind throughout the history of the United States, describing the author's visit to a Mount Washington weather observatory, talks with Iowa tornado survivors, takes part in a hang-gliding venture in North Carolina, and more, in an account that also relates her scientific and personal observations from her home on the wind-shaped islands of the Outer Banks. Reprint.

In Wind, Jan DeBlieu brings a poet's voice and a scientist's eye to this remarkable natural force, showing how the bumping of a few molecules can lead to the creation of religions, the discovery of continents, the destruction of empires. DeBlieu visits the weather observatory at the summit of Mount Washington, where some of the highest wind speeds in the world have been recorded. She talks to survivors of a deadly tornado in Iowa, tries hang gliding over North Carolina's Outer Banks, climbs sand dunes in Oregon and slickrock formations in Utah - everywhere exploring the effects, subtle and brutal, comforting and terrifying, of the wind.