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

by Jan Deblieu

The winds of the world have sculpted the land and all aspects of nature, but they've also shaped humans — histories, cultures and settlements. Ephemeral and powerful, the wind is impossible to capture in a single phrase or image. In Wind, Jan DeBlieu sets out to better understand this force of nature by exploring its many aspects and effects, large and small, in a quest that spans the United States.
She visits a weather observatory at the summit of Mount Washington, talks to survivors of a deadly tornado in Iowa, tries hang gliding in North Carolina, and climbs sand dunes in Oregon and slickrock formations in Utah. DeBlieu lives on one of the most wind-plagued landscapes on the earth, North Carolina's Outer Banks, where the winds have shaped the contours of the islands, the migrations of birds and fish, and the customs and character of the residents. In poetic prose she seamlessly interweaves her life experiences with scientific research to compelling and enriching result.
Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing, Wind brings us closer to a force that affects us all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science

312 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 1998

About the author

Jan DeBlieu is an American writer whose work often focuses on how people are shaped by the landscapes in which they live. Her own writing has been influenced by her adopted home in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deblieu takes us on quite a journey to introduce us to the movement of air. From the ancient spiritual to the modern meteorology, we find that the gaseous layer which surrounds us has immense power to make our lives interesting, and sometimes almost impossible, as we experience the wind through the its various manifestations on land and sea. Well done.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this book were really interesting to me: aeolian geography, animal migration and wind, and some of the old human stories related to the wind. Other parts really didn't hold my interest. Overall though, it's a great collection of many different aspects of something that everyone knows at least a tiny bit about.

[Kelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm this was middle for me, and I actually think that if the author was not focusing most of the book on her home in the Outer Banks, NC, that I would not have been very interested (I come from NC so I knew the places she was talking about). This was written in the 90s but it didn't feel incredibly outdated to me, and it was still full of nice writing about the wind in various places. But I would say it was more poetic than scientific, similar in style to The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold by Gretel Ehrlich. This writing style is not my favorite, as I was hoping for more of a scientific perspective, but if you enjoy this style then I can definitely recommend this book.

[Deby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The wind is constant and a never ending life force. In Yoga our life force, including our breath, is called Prana. I often consider the Wind, God's Prana and feel blessed to live in Ketchikan where the wind is an ever present influence. I was thrilled to start a book with great promise of spinning stories of wind and culture. Although the book starts out strong and continues with outstanding research, I got slightly bored with the continued reference to the Outer Banks (her home) and repetitive style. I came onboard with too many expectations of poetry and literature, which occurred in few quotes from authors such as Antoine De St. Exupery, hoping for that beauty. Still worth the read but would approach this book more like a magazine and skip around through the chapters that sounded appealing.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for my bird club book club. I guess we were interested in how the wind affects migrating birds, but the book told us so much more about the wind. It was a fairly slow read but an interesting one. I enjoyed the chapters on storms, on the ways people have flown, insect migration, and the effects of wind on building construction. I was especially struck by her description of hang-gliding, but she didn't convince me to want to try it myself. I wish there had been some diagrams or illustrations, e.g. the ocean currents. One of our members thought this book was the best he had ever read in our club. DeBlieu lives on the Outer Banks, the place where I read the book, and it was fun to find references to places that I was seeing every day.

[Suzanne Auckerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book very interesting. The writer at times was a little to poetical for me. It reminded me of the English high school teacher that wrote Moby Duck wondering off into Moby Dick and writing poetry. But she covered aspects of the wind that I have never thought about. And I will read more of her stuff. Thanks, Elizabeth for loaning me this one.

[Jrobertus · Rating 2 out of 5]

she tries for a mcfee/lopez kind of awe inspiring reflection on nature, but comes up a bit short. she discusses physical laws and the effects of wind on various cultures.

[Taylor Waters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright - went on for a bit in some areas.

[Jennifer Salazar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book covered so many facets of wind - as means of travel, in mythology, in shaping history - that were highly interesting. But I just didn't feel like it was well written. Not bad non-fiction, just not with the finesse of say a John McPhee.