Books: "The Breath of the Gods" By Simon Winchester

 

The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind

By Simon Winchester

Harper; hardcover, 416 pages; $35.00

Simon Winchester is known for writing books that could be considered epic in nature, from The Professor and the Madman to The Men Who United the States, and The Map That Changed the World, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and received acclaim as they appeared on numerous best and notable lists. He also had a long career in journalism at The Guardian, where he covered many historical events, including Watergate. In 2006, Winchester was honored as an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. A London native, he currently resides in New York and Western Massachusetts.

The Breath of the Gods is Winchester's new book, a very timely work focusing on the history of the wind in search of what is going on in the atmosphere. While headlines are filled with stories of devastating hurricanes and forest fires, there is a force at play that is at the heart of weather.

Wind is the movement of air that has shaped human culture and mythology. It has played a part in history that may not be realized, from the Dust Bowl to the D-Day invasion, and even the fascinating story of the tumbleweed, an iconic symbol of the American West.  

The story of wind is, in essence, the story of civilization, from exploration and migration to climate and energy debates today. Observed by many as a heavenly creation and thing of essential goodness, it's an unseen force whose global wind patterns are certainly felt, as they do not respect national borders and no vessel or structure in its path. 

In 2022, atmospheric scientists at the University of Northern Illinois released a report warning that winds are expected to steadily increase in the years ahead, increasing in power, speed, and frequency. This dire prediction worried the insurance industry and government leaders, it was received with enthusiasm by the energy industry. Rising wind strength and speeds were seen as a benefit to humankind, as it was a vital source of clean and "safe" power.

Wins can be seen in its promise as a climate solution, as well as its destructive potential. This battle is not new, as Scottish engineer James Blyth's neighbors refused free electricity in 1887, but it certainly is current, right up to President Donald Trump arguing against wind farms in order to protect his golf course. views.

Between the two poles of seeing wind as a savior of our planet and as a malevolent force is a world of fascination, history, literature, science, poetry, and engineering, and Winchester explores that with a curiosity and vigor that is a characteristic of his work and draws the reader in. Part of the reason is he looks at how wind plays a part in our everyday lives, from airplane or car travel to the "natural disasters" becoming more frequent and regular, while balancing its impact throughout history.

In this excerpt, Winchester writes of the nature of wind: There are places in the world where for days or weeks o end there are not winds at all - and most unsettling the experience of being  in such places can be. Regions of unbearable calm exist particularly out on the open oceans, close by the equator, in what since the early nineteenth century have been known from the Dutch word for dull as the doldrums. A sailor marooned in the doldrums, in that notorious sink of lifelessness and airless torpor, cuts a wretched figure. Immobile, impotent, salt-grimed, half-mad with thirst and tedium, and with his craft - the "painted ship. / Upon a painted ocean" that Coleridge had memorialized in his Rime of the Ancient Mariner - floating listless, the sails hanging like funeral shrouds, the hull pinioned to a scalding and oily-looking sea.

A robust and lustily blowing gale can be an invigorating happening, however. Ever since childhood I have listened to the nightly BBC broadcast of the Shipping Forecast, created a century ago for all those vessels - fishing boats, mainly - that were doing their business on great waters, out on the season around the British Isles. Out in the ferocious gales of the North Sea, on the overcrowded routes of the Irish Sea and the English Channel, and off to the islands' west, the wide Atlantic herself. Out there, in those so-called sea areas with names that all British radio listeners would come to know intimately - Humber, Dogger, Malin, Viking, Hebrides, Trafalgar, southeast Iceland, Faroes, Finisterre - mariners would listen keenly to the near-poetic intonations of the announcers, telling them of the expected conditions - Rockall, nine hundred and sixty filling slowly to nine hundred and ninety, westerly Storm Force Ten, backing southwest eight, snow showers becoming rain, poor becoming good - which in this case told a fisherman who was riding the gray swells way to the west of Scotland's Outer Hebrides that a cyclonic depression was easing, the winds were slowing and backing across the compass to bring in warmer southerly air, the snow was changing to rain, and the visibility from the bridge was likely to improve in the coming hours. He would, in short, soon be a happier skipper.

And meanwhile, in common with countless others in bedrooms across the nation - for this broadcast, invariably heard around local midnight, has in recent years become required listening for a sizable fraction of the British public - I would pull the blankets more cozily up to my chin, listen to the rain, drumming on the windowpanes, and reflect that at least I wasn't out in a full gale on the high seas but snug and safe at home. And it was the wind in particular that we always wanted to know about. Not the rain or the fog or the driving snow. What we always wanted was: Was it blowing Force Three or Four - the Beaufort scale we all somehow knew - or was it maybe roaring Six or Eight, with great waves and swells, or maybe even Force Ten or worse, with the tiny trawler, blinded by spume, heeling over in constant danger of foundering and sinking to its doom? That was what made the forecast in a perverse way somehow comforting - the danger was out there, while all here in bed within, though the wind might be doing its worst outside, was secure, as it surely always would be. And so, sleep.