Weather correspondent Philip Eden has written a fascinating book on a vast subject: the weather, or more specifically, weather disasters. Balancing just the right amount of science with illustrations and practical language, this book asks and answers some difficult questions that must be discussed.Here is a popular book with big set- piece descriptions accompanied by illustrations at its core, but with enough science to attract both the specialist reader and to educate the lay reader without scaring them off. Disaster books traditionally feed on hype, sensationalism and bad science. Eden redresses the balance.What then is the place of weather disasters in our climate? Are they freaks or a necessary part of the whole? How rare are meteorological event does it take to cause chaos in our day-to-day lives? Are we becoming more at risk and less capable of dealing with them? Or do we just complain more? These days we try and mitigate the effects of different hazards, by acquiring personal and property protection - individually, personally and politically.So what is the role of local and central government, the insurance industry, the media and the public? And how do we actually measure disaster? By rarity, insurance cost, death toll, recovery times or what? Can we merge all these so we can compare - say - the 1976 drought with the 1891 blizzard? Can we rank disasters? 15,000 died in last year's European heatwave. Is this the shape of things to come? What will happen when the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Drift stops flowing? Here are just a few of Philip Eden's topics in a book which will be riveting to readers.

Philip Eden, a trained meteorologist from the University of Birmingham worked for several years as a weather forecaster in the oil industry before he started his career on the radio, well known to the audience of BBC Fife Life since 1994. He writes for the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and also authored a couple of very popular books. Philip writes weekly features and monthly lookbacks for WeatherOnline since March 2001.

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illustrated edition (20 Sep 2008)

It is extraordinary what a sadistic old crone Mother Nature is when you think about it. Even in a comparatively benign climate like ours: we have gallons of water thrown at us at regular intervals, we can be thrown half way across the country by winds gusting to 100 mph or more, blankets of fog may hide practically everything familiar from view, and we run the risk of being blasted into next week by a million- bolt of lightning. And on occasion she will even launch an artillery barrage of solid ice missiles at 50 or 60 mph - in other words hailstones - or utterly transform the landscape under a six inch layer of snow'. In such language, Eden sets the tone for his new book. He now investigates further the extremes of weather we experience and the dire consequences for farmers, builders and above all insurance companies who live by a calculation of actuarial risk. Many of us have become disconnected from our climate, writes Eden. However bizarre weather events may seem at the time, there is usually a precedent for them, and there is always a scientific explanation. Only by reconnecting in this way can we have proper historical and scientific contexts in which to place the sequence of interesting and unusual meteorological phenomena we will experience in coming years.

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New edition (6 April 2006)