The Summer of Death

The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern Day America

Geoff Williams

A riveting historic narrative that tells the iconic story of the great heat wave that ravaged the continent in the last gasps of the Dust Bowl.

In 1936, ironically after one of the coldest winters on record, North America experienced a heat wave that remains unmatched today. Thanks to a combination of an unusually warm sea surface in the Atlantic and Pacific, stagnating low-pressure, drought and poor farming techniques, temperatures soared across virtually every state (and the territory of Alaska) for months and killed more than 11,000 Americans and approximately 1,000 Canadians. Air conditioning was uncommon, workers’ rights were few, and in an age before high blood pressure medication, a lot of middle-aged people, toiling in the sun, were literally working themselves to death.

This was a summer in which there was almost no escape from the heat, and woe to those who tried to flee it. Men, women and children rushed into rivers to cool off, only to drown. Others slept on roofs to cool off, only to roll over and plummet to their deaths. Young and old, rich and poor, but especially poor – it didn’t really matter. If the heat wanted you, it was going to get you.

The heat wave of 1936 would spark massive social and technological advances, as well as improvements in health care, and it would also start an ongoing national dialogue about climate change.

Filled with history and characters as intense as the oppressive heat itself, The Summer of Death will be the first nonfiction book solely about this paradigm changing summer. In the tradition of Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Times and Edward P. Kohn’s Hot Time in the Old Town, The Summer of Death reveals a unique and vital chapter of American history, one that we ignore at our peril.

Geoff Williams is the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America. For most of his life, Williams has lived less than an hour away from the Great Flood's epicenter in Dayton, Ohio.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Geoff Williams

“Williams chronicles the devastation in a voice reminiscent of Mark Twain and James Thurber. Williams proves a marvelous storyteller; Thurberian wit and whimsy saturate the pages. Williams' crisp and colorful vernacular offers valuable insights on the causes of the Great Flood.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Williams weaves tragic and heroic stories of people in the various affected states into an almost hour-by-hour account of the deadly storm. This quick-reading history published for the storm’s centennial should interest readers who enjoyed Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm or Simon Winchester’s A Crack in the Edge of the World about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.” Booklist

“The meticulously researched account covers dramatic rescues, sorrowful endings, dishonest scams and political machinations. Williams builds a convincing argument that we continue to ignore lessons concerning the treatment of our beleaguered planet.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune