For readers of “The Perfect Storm” and “Blue Latitudes,” recast for our era of rapid ecological transformation, comes an urgent, stirring amalgam of climate writing, history, adventure story, and fascinating personal memoir.
In his previous book, “The Last Winter,” Porter Fox told the story of the globe's fast-melting snow and ice with skill, depth, and immediacy. The story of the changing weather doesn't end there, though; in fact, it literally follows (and begins, as Fox will explain) with our oceans. The secret to understanding the effects of climate change, Porter offers, is in understanding how major changes in the oceans affect our climates on land. To understand how we can live through wild storms of greater frequency and magnitude, scientists have turned to a college drop-out-turned-maverick sailor and ocean storm-chaser, a charismatic and mysterious man named John Kretschmer.
Category Five revolves around Fox's time shadowing Kretschmer, on his greatest and most dangerous voyage into the storm season, this winter, and next summer as Kretschmer sails into the thawed Northwest Passage through the Arctic. Along the way, he'll telescope out and in-forward and back-through the history of oceans and climate, and perhaps most interestingly, into his own youth. Fox was the son of one of the most decorated boat builders in America, grew up his father's workshop and on the boats themselves off a famed small port on the coast of Maine.
