The Man Who Caught the Storm, Brantley Hargrove
The Man Who Caught the Storm, Brantley Hargrove
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The Man Who Caught the Storm
The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras

Author: Brantley Hargrove

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Unabridged: 8 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2018


Synopsis

The saga of the greatest tornado chaser who ever lived: a tale of obsession and daring and an extraordinary account of humanity’s high-stakes race to understand nature’s fiercest phenomenon from Brantley Hargrove, “one of today’s great science writers” (The Washington Post).

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science’s every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider.

In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college in his life. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing. As his ambitions grew, so did the risks. And when he finally met his match—in a faceoff against the largest tornado ever recorded—it upended everything he thought he knew.

Brantley Hargrove delivers a “cinematically thrilling and scientifically wonky” (Outside) tale, chronicling the life of Tim Samaras in all its triumph and tragedy. Hargrove takes readers inside the thrill of the chase, the captivating science of tornadoes, and the remarkable character of a man who walked the line between life and death in pursuit of knowledge. The Man Who Caught the Storm is an “adrenaline rush of a tornado chase…Readers from all across the spectrum will enjoy this” (Library Journal, starred review) unforgettable exploration of obsession and the extremes of the natural world.

About Brantley Hargrove

Brantley Hargrove is a journalist who has written for WiredPopular Mechanics, and Texas Monthly. He’s gone inside the effort to reverse-engineer supertornadoes using supercomputers and has chased violent storms from the Great Plains down to the Texas coast. He lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Renee, and their two cats. The Man Who Caught the Storm is his first book.


Reviews

Goodreads review by L.A. on April 18, 2018

Highly, highly recommended. In this debut work, Brantley Hargrove captures the adrenaline-fueled chase of tornadoes, season after season, by a man whose persistence, inventive genius, and bravery led to never-before-made measurements from inside tornadoes. Caught by the quest to explain and predict......more

Goodreads review by Ellen Gail on February 12, 2020

3.5 stars. An honest and painfully beautiful story of a scientist and his passion. Fun fact about your friendly neighborhood Ellen Gail - I LOVE TORNADOES. Seems like a weird thing to love probably. I don't love the death and destruction they cause, but the sheer power and beauty of it is unrivaled i......more

Goodreads review by Lee on July 28, 2018

All Netflix documentaries are about obsessives -- this one just happens to be in print form. It's a wonderfully well-written, often gripping, more than sufficiently informative, and ultimately moving literary biopic about Tim Samaras, a tornado obsessive known for his presence on the show "Storm Cha......more

Goodreads review by paige (ptsungirl) on March 19, 2025

"Chasing gave me respect for how much energy is in the air we breathe."......more

Goodreads review by Brendan on March 25, 2020

It's possible, though unlikely, that you read my review from last August of "The Topeka School," one of 2019's best reviewed books. If you didn't, that's ok — I'll give you the abridged version. The book sucked. Not least because its cover, very deceptively, depicts a tornado, a churning mass of bla......more