Everett S. Allen joined the staff of the New Bedford Standard-Times in September 1938. He was assigned to the waterfront. The following day the storm of the century blew in. This is his account, the first and still the best account of the devastating hurricane of 1938. Allen has gathered first-hand accounts of survivors from South Jersey, Boston, Rhode Island, and especially Long Island and Cape Cod where the blow hit hardest (top winds were clocked at 186 mph). His vivid description of the mellow September day that turned yellow and then sea-green with 40-foot waves is more heartfelt than all the disaster movies ever made. -Kirkus Reviews
Everett S. Allen was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1916. He moved to Martha's Vineyard when he was eight years old. After graduating from Tisbury High School, he attended Tabor Academy and Middlebury College. He was hired as a waterfront reporter by the New Bedford Standard-Times on the day before the hurricane of 1938, which became the subject for his book A Wind to Shake the World. After enlisting in the US Navy, where he served in Europe and participated in D-Day, he returned to the Standard-Times, where he worked until his retirement in 1979. The author of seven books, Allen died in 1990.