"It was like facing an angry dark ocean. The wind was fierce enough that that day it tore away roofs, smashed windows, and blew down the smokestack - 130 feet high and 54 inches in diameter - at the giant A. G. Wineman & Sons lumber mill, destroyed half of the 110-foot-high smokestack of the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, and drove great chocolate waves against the levee, where the surf broke, splashing waist-high against the men, knocking them off-balance before rolling down to the street. Out on the river, detritus swept past - whole trees, a roof, fence posts, upturned boats, the body of a mule." (Prologue, pp. 15 - 16)

"The valley of the Mississippi River stretches north into Canada and south to the Gulf of Mexico, east from New York, and North Carolina and west to Idaho and New Mexico. It is a valley 20 percent larger than that of China's...