Global warming is a fact. And although policy makers continue to argue about just what that means on a practical level, scientists assure us that one of the many consequences of that pattern of global warming will be ever more frequent and ever more intense storms. All of this makes David Longshore s book a timely, and highly useful, addition to a weather-watcher s library. Longshore, a historian with a particular interest in disasters, details the effects of hundreds of storms, from 1999 s deadly Hurricane Floyd to unnamed tempests that wreaked havoc on the coast of India 700 years ago. His A-to-Z encyclopedia includes little-known fragments of history (such as Benjamin Franklin s career as a meteorologist, which extends well beyond the kite-in-a-thunderstorm legend to significant contributions, which are still current, such as the Law of Storms), notes on such storm-bred phenomena as the firefly effect, in which billions of grains of sand collide in mid air and produce sparks, chronologies of major storms, and major articles on individual storms and storm-prone nations of the world.In a helpful appendix, Longshore reminds his readers that although surprise hurricanes are largely a thing of the past thanks to advances in storm prediction and monitoring, it is good common sense to keep your eye on the sky during hurricane and typhoon season. --Gregory McNamee