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El Nino in History: Storming through the Ages. By CESAR N. CAVIEDES. Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Pp. xiv + 279. $24.95 (cloth)
In 1588 a severe storm dismantled the Spanish Armada, eliminating it as a threat to England. This weather story is familiar to all of us educated in the Anglophone world. If we were Japanese schoolchildren, our climatic salvation story would be the Kamikaze-the Divine Wind-that destroyed the Mongol forces invading Japan. In recent times, climate's best-known role in world history is as the cruel Russian winter of 1942, the nemesis of Hitler's Russian campaign. This, of course, was a reprise of the 1812 winter's decimation of Napoleon's army.
The best-known syndrome of climate anomalies...