New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester returns with a thought-provoking history of the wind, written in his edifying and entertaining style. What is going on with our atmosphere? The headlines are filled with news of devastating hurricanes, murderous tornadoes, and cataclysmic fires affecting large swaths of America. Gale force advisories are issued on a regular basis by the National Weather Service. In 2023, a report was released by atmospheric scientists at the University of Northern Illinois, warning that winds—the force at the center of all these dangerous natural events—are expected to steadily increase in the years ahead, strengthening in power, speed, and frequency. While this prediction worried the insurance industry, governmental leaders, scientists, and conscientious citizens, one particular segment of society received it with unbridled enthusiasm. To the energy industry, rising wind strength and speeds as an unalloyed boon for humankind—a vital source of clean and “safe” power. Between these two poles—wind as a malevolent force, and wind as savior of our planet—lies a world of fascination, history, literature, science, poetry, and engineering which Simon Winchester explores with the curiosity and vigor that are the hallmarks of his bestselling works. In The Breath of the Gods, he explains how wind plays a part in our everyday lives, from airplane or car travel to the “natural disasters” that are becoming more frequent and regular. The Breath of the Gods is an urgently-needed portrait across time of that unseen force—unseen but not unfelt—that respects no national borders and no vessel or structure in its path. Wind, the movement of the air, is seen by so many as a heavenly creation and generally a thing of essential goodness. But when it flexes its invisible muscles, all should take care and be very afraid.
Author
Simon Winchester, OBE, is a British writer, journalist and broadcaster who resides in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. As an author, Simon Winchester has written or contributed to over a dozen nonfiction books and authored one novel, and his articles appear in several travel publications including Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic. In 1969, Winchester joined The Guardian, first as regional correspondent based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but was later assigned to be the Northern Ireland Correspondent. Winchester's time in Northern Ireland placed him around several events of The Troubles, including the events of Bloody Sunday and the Belfast Hour of Terror. After leaving Northern Ireland in 1972, Winchester was briefly assigned to Calcutta before becoming The Guardian's American correspondent in Washington, D.C., where Winchester covered news ranging from the end of Richard Nixon's administration to the start of Jimmy Carter's presidency. In 1982, while working as the Chief Foreign Feature Writer for The Sunday Times, Winchester was on location for the invasion of the Falklands Islands by Argentine forces. Suspected of being a spy, Winchester was held as a prisoner in Tierra del Fuego for three months. Winchester's first book, In Holy Terror, was published by Faber and Faber in 1975. The book drew heavily on his first-hand experiences during the turmoils in Ulster. In 1976, Winchester published his second book, American Heartbeat, which dealt with his personal travels through the American heartland. Winchester's third book, Prison Diary, was a recounting of his imprisonment at Tierra del Fuego during the Falklands War and, as noted by Dr Jules Smith, is responsible for his rise to prominence in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Winchester produced several travel books, most of which dealt with Asian and Pacific locations including Korea, Hong Kong, and the Yangtze River. Winchester's first truly successful book was The Professor and the Madman (1998), published by Penguin UK as The Surgeon of Crowthorne. Telling the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the book was a New York Times Best Seller, and Mel Gibson optioned the rights to a film version, likely to be directed by John Boorman. Though Winchester still writes travel books, he has repeated the narrative non-fiction form he used in The Professor and the Madman several times, many of which ended in books placed on best sellers lists. His 2001 book, The Map that Changed the World, focused on geologist William Smith and was Whichester's second New York Times best seller. The year 2003 saw Winchester release another book on the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Meaning of Everything, as well as the best-selling Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. Winchester followed Krakatoa's volcano with San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in A Crack in the Edge of the World. The Man Who Loved China (2008) retells the life of eccentric Cambridge scholar Joseph Needham, who helped to expose China to the western world. Winchester's latest book, The Alice Behind Wonderland, was released March 11, 2011.
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