A thrilling, innovative novel about the interplay between nature and humankind by the author of Names on the Land. With Storm, first published in 1941, George R. Stewart invented a new genre of fiction: the eco-novel. California has been plunged into drought throughout the summer and fall when a ship reports an unusual barometric reading from the far western Pacific. In San Francisco, a junior meteorologist in the Weather Bureau takes note of the anomaly and plots “an incipient little whorl” on the weather map, a developing storm, he suspects, that he privately dubs Maria. Stewart’s novel tracks Maria’s progress to and beyond the shores of the United States through the eyes of meteorologists, linemen, snowplow operators, a general, a couple of decamping lovebirds, and an unlucky owl, and the storm, surging and ebbing, will bring long-needed rain, flooded roads, deep snows, accidents, and death. Storm is an epic account of humanity’s relationship to and dependence on the natural world.

Presents a history of the decisive battle at Gettysburg based on military and personal accounts.

“Compulsive reading—a wonderful account, both scholarly and gripping, of a horrifying episode in the history of the west.” —Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846 eighty-seven people—men, women, and children—set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering. Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers; an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.

Best known for his 1949 post-apocalyptic thriller Earth Abides, George R. Stewart (1895-1980) spent a lifetime wandering the American landscape and writing books about its geography and history. An English professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the exceptional scholar-author penned some of the most remarkable literary works of the 20th century, inventing several types of books along the way--including the road-geography book, micro-history, place-name history, ecological history, and the ecological novel. By weaving human and natural sciences and history into his books Stewart created works with a multi-disciplinary perspective on events and places that influenced numerous other writers, artists, and scientists, including Stephen King, Greg Bear, and Page Stegner. This volume considers George R. Stewart's rich oeuvre while chronicling a life-long quest to uncover the deepest truths about the man and his work.

"Topographers, geographers, and physiographers have written much about the Earth's surface, but that is not, as such, our present theme. Here we consider not the places themselves, but the names by which they are distinguished, what are commonly known in English as place-names." - from chapter 1, "The Place and the Name."