Immeasurable Weather

“In her analysis of the relationship between weather data and human experience, Sara J. Grossman’s main point—all the data in the world won’t save us—is stupendously timely and significant. Scholars of environmental history, of environmental humanities, and of the history of science will learn a great deal from this important book.” - Joyce E. Chaplin, author of Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit

“Building on the idea that science has long been embedded in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, this book argues that we should approach weather and all its entanglements in ways that reinforce rather than sever our connections to the more-than-human world and our relationships with each other. Ultimately, the book challenges the environmentalist fetish for data and the assumption that it mobilizes people to action. Instead, the legacy of this data fetish shows that it can just as often lead to more damage, especially to the relationships and communities on which flourishing ecosystems depend.” - Sarah Jaquette Ray, Professor, Cal Poly Humboldt

“Grossman has drawn together a wide body of scholarship and a rich archive of historical data in a timely account of our relationship with weather and our environment, as it is mediated through data.” - Alice Oates, H-Environment, H-Net Reviews

"A sociocultural history of weather data, Immeasurable Weather is a feat both in substance and style. . . . Many key themes throughout Immeasurable Weather will be worthwhile to scholars interested in the critical study of data, automation, and technology. Historians of technology will find intriguing connections between the militarization of weather data and the rise of wartime computing." - Sara M. B. Simon, Technology and Culture

"Grossman’s book – presented as a ‘sociocultural history of environmental data’ (12)—fits very well in the sub-disciplines of the history of science and international political sociology. The writing is clear, dynamic, poetic and personal." - Kaian Lam, Cambridge Review of International Affairs

"Immeasurable Weather is a timely addition to the study of meteorology’s formative decades. Its introduction of settler colonialism as an analytical frame to the history of that field is both an interesting and valuable perspective. . . . [T]he book surely ought to find its way onto the shelf of anyone interested in the evolution of US meteorology, the history of settler colonialism and American nation building, or data in the history of science more generally." - Robert Suits, Physics Today

"Immeasurable Weather offers timely and crucial anti-colonial and feminist perspectives amid the growing interest in the history and philosophy of the atmosphere. This work is particularly valuable for scholars in STS and environmental history. It would also be of interest to professionals in meteorology and climate science." - Dong Xia, Science as Cutlure

"Immeasurable Weather is an important book that interrogates the history of weather data in the United States with special attunement to the colonial structures that underlie our ubiquitous 'Anthropocene.' Grossman’s critical perspective to data, and weather data specifically, is a necessary intervention into the history of the United States as a settler colonial power, and how deeply situated settler systems are woven into communal ways of knowing and looking at the world." - Pamela C. Perrimon, International Journal of Communication

"While elements of Grossman’s analysis and narrative will be familiar to historians of science and the weather, her attention to the context and process of how data was collected, by whom, and for what ends over time provides an important perspective on that larger narrative, one that other scholars and advanced students will want to consider." - Matthew Mulcahy, The Journal of American History