Storia del mondo in 10 tempeste. Nebbia, uragani e grandi battaglie

Rain, fog, wind, frost, drought. There is a silent protagonist that spans millennia and influences the fate of humanity more than kings, generals and revolutions: climate, along with all its atmospheric emissaries. Napoleon had calculated everything but the storm that broke out during the night of the 17th June 1815, making the ground impassable and forcing the emperor to make postponements that proved to be critical; a fog was exploited by Hannibal to achieve victory in the Battle of Lake Trasimene and a climate changes drove the so-called “barbarians” to emigrate, contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire; a snowfall influenced the outcome of the War of the Roses, and a tornado played a key role in the American War of Independence; while it was an anticyclone responsible for the famine that triggered the French Revolution, and observations of clouds that condemned Hiroshima and Nagasaki to becoming targets of the atomic bomb. Vincenzo Levizzani shows how the weather has always acted as the invisible director of major historical events and how it continues to do so today. A work that is also a reflection on ambition and humility: because often when we delude ourselves into thinking we are holding the reins of history, what we actually find enclosed in our hands is but a drop of rain.