Stephen Long On The Hurricane That Transformed New England

Join us for a presentation and signing from Stephen Long, author of Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane That Transformed New England. Long is the founder and former editor of Northern Woodlands magazine and author of More Than a Woodlot: Getting the Most from Your Family Forest. For more than twenty-five years he has been writing about the forests and people of New England while exploring his own woods in Corinth, VT.

Here's what the book will be about:

The hurricane that pummeled the northeastern United States on September 21, 1938, was New England’s most damaging weather event ever. To call it “New England’s Katrina” might be to understate its power. Without warning, the storm plowed into Long Island and New England, killing hundreds of people and destroying roads, bridges, dams, and buildings that stood in its path. Not yet spent, the hurricane then raced inland, maintaining high winds into Vermont and New Hampshire and uprooting millions of acres of forest. This book is the first to investigate how the hurricane of ’38 transformed New England, bringing about social and ecological changes that can still be observed these many decades later.

 

The hurricane’s impact was erratic—some swaths of forest were destroyed while others nearby remained unscathed; some stricken forests retain their prehurricane character, others have been transformed. Stephen Long explores these contradictions, drawing on survivors’ vivid memories of the storm and its aftermath and on his own familiarity with New England’s forests, where he discovers clues to the storm’s legacies even now. Thirty-Eight is a gripping story of a singularly destructive hurricane. It also provides important and insightful information on how best to prepare for the inevitable next great storm.

Long will answer questions and sign books following his presentation.