After witnessing the devastation of his mothers house in Hurricane Katrina Mooney was concerned that government policy failed to consider worst-case scenarios when planning for the future even after that disaster.
It covers the clash of ideas in the 1950s between observationalists including Robert Simpson comparing hurricanes to "heat engines" and theorists and early computer modelers who advocated a mathematical theory Conditional Instability of the Second Kind (CISK).
[2] Lisa Margonelli, reviewing Storm World for the New York Times, describes it as "a well-researched, nuanced book that suffers from poor organization and a lack of pizazz.
"[2] In a mixed review in the Los Angeles Times Thomas Hayden wrote that Mooney deftly handled the complexity of the questions surrounding global warming and its effect on hurricanes.
While saying that, "Mooney has a talent for humanizing the science and scientists" he criticizes the author for focusing too much on the over the top behavior of William Gray rather than presenting other researchers critiques of the subject.