In 2011, despite continued developments in forecasting, tracking, and warning technology, the United States was hit by the deadliest tornado season in decades. More than 1,200 tornadoes touched down, shattering communities and their safety nets, and...

The past decade has been characterized by remarkable advances in meteorological observation, computing techniques, and data-visualization technology. However, the benefit of these advances can only be fully realized with the introduction of a systema...

As far back as the early 1900s, the Quakers have been engaged in a program of quiet private diplomacy that won them a Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. During the turbulent 1960s, hey acted as unofficial conciliators in several tense situations. This compre...

Enlightenment inquiries into the weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions".British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment" reveals how a new sense of the national climate emerged in the...

Gazing up at the heavens from our backyards or a nearby field, most of us see an undifferentiated mess of stars – if, that is, we can see anything at all through the glow of light pollution. Today's casual observer knows far less about the sky than d...

"Climate is a rather elusive entity", wrote Helmut Landsberg in 1950 as he sorted out some twenty or so competing definitions. This volume of "Osiris" explores the complexities in understanding what climate means from a historical perspective. The vo...

For many, a map is nothing more than a tool used to determine the location or distribution of something – a country, a city, or a natural resource. But maps reveal much more: to really read a map means to examine what it shows and what it doesn't, an...

In the seventeenth century, a map of the plague suggested a radical idea – that the disease was carried and spread by humans. In the nineteenth century, maps of cholera cases were used to prove its waterborne nature. More recently, maps charting the...

For almost a decade, economists Kevin M. Simmons and Daniel Sutter have been studying the economic impacts and social consequences of the approximately 1,200 tornadoes that touch down across the United States annually. During this time, Simmons and S...

Not for sale in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic! This unique atlas visually depicts a variety of transformational processes that occurred in the Czech Republic during the past twenty years. Central to the transformation was a rapid econo...