Really good recap of the 2017 Astros WS run, as well as the troubles the city faced due to Hurricane Harvey. Loved the way the story of the city and the team were intermingled, as well as the amount of information given about both of them. Solid read!

Joe Holley's Hurricane Season is a look back to last summer and fall, as the formerly woebegone Houston Astros ascended to the top of Major League Baseball, capturing the franchise's first World Series title. This all happened against the backdrop of their home city getting devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

Holley intersperses tale of the Astros with stories from Hurricane Harvey and wraps both around a timeline of each game of the thrilling seven game World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. These are fairly routine summaries and include several anecdotes and quotes that first appeared in Houston-area news sources at the time.

The strength of this book are the tales of ordinary citizens, how they struggled against Hurricane Harvey's presence and aftermath, and how the story of Houston in the year 2017 really was the story of Harvey and the Astros. The book's high points come where those two elements intersect.

As a baseball book, this one is pretty non-descript. There are likely to be better books about this Astros team (and one possibility is slated for release later this summer by Sports Illustrated's Ben Reiter, the man who wrote the 2014 story in the magazine predicting the Astros would capture the World Series in 2017). However, as a story about how a sports team can rally a city and serve a greater purpose in times of civic trial, Hurricane Season is an uplifting pick.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Sports history books typically come in one of two flavors: written by homers as a piece of fan memorabilia, or written by journalists unconnected and separated from cities and cultures, and often the times, the events took place. A certain amount of distance from the event can be desirable, because separation and hindsight can often lend an amount of objectivity. But a writer too far removed from his subject can only relate what he or she hears from others, often missing peices of the story's vast puzzle.

But Joe Holley's "Hurricane Season" places you right in the middle of the Astros' 2017 World Series run and the terrible events of Hurricane Harvey. Holley's local status as a Houston Chronicle columnist doesn't put him in the homer camp - Hurricane Season isn't a fan's recounting of the baseball season. Instead, it's a beautifully woven story of Houston's history, the Astros' oft-overlooked history (including a great chapter about the famous/infamous Judge Roy Hofeinz and the birth of the Astros and the Astrodome full of "No way!" moments), and the facts, figures, and personal stories of Hurricane Harvey. Harvey's assault on Houston doesn't just serve as a backdrop to the story of the Astros's season - Holley spends several chapters describing in great detail the storm's wrath, the impact on Houstonians (both individually and collectively), and how the Astros both were affected by the storm and affected their city's response to it.

Folks who didn't follow the news closely during the last week of August 2017 may read Holley's account of the storm as full of exaggeration and hyperbole - but as a native Houstonian who lived through Harvey's destruction and Houston's rebuilding, I can attest that the sheer scale of the devastation is hard to overstate. And while tying of the Astros' success to the hearts of Houstonians is harder to quantify than rainfall measurements and flood damage statistics, Holley's sometimes heart-wrenching stories ring no less true. On no less than a dozen occasions, I had to put the book down because the stories and details inside brought back painful memories of watching my city drown.

"Hurriance Season" isn't just a sports book. It's an excellent volume of American history.

P.S. I received an advance copy of this book from Hachette Books via NetGalley for review purposes, but I have pre-ordered a hardcover for my personal library.

I just finished a remarkable book, due to be published May 1. "Hurricane Season," by Joe Holley, tells in great detail about the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey on Houston and the amazing uplifting effect of the Houston Astros as they took years to reach the epitome of baseball with their World Series Championship. Houston is my home for the last 71 years, so maybe that's why this resonated with me, but it is a thrilling story that I recommend to anyone, whether you are a Houstonian or not, and whether you are a baseball fan or not.

The 2017 Houston Astros were a team with a great story. Considering the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, what this team accomplished is remarkable. The author did a great job of tying these two stories together in a way that mixed the story of the hurricane with the story of baseball seamlessly. The team is full of characters that are enjoyable to read about. A fun book.

Winning the 2017 World Series meant much more to the Houston Astros and their fans. After Houston suffered so much devastation from Hurricane Harvey that summer, some wondered if the Astros were going to be able to concentrate on baseball. That question was answered with a trade for one of the game’s best pitchers, a strong postseason and winning an exciting World Series over the Los Angeles Dodgers in which two of the games (games 2 and 5) are considered to be two of the best games played in World Series history.

This book by Houston Chronicle columnist Joe Holley is a very good account of not only all seven World Series games, but also a moving description of the devastation caused the flooding from the hurricane and the long road to recovery for many people. The three chapters that described the horrific rainfall - nearly 60 inches, the most from one rain event ever recorded in the United States) and the heroic efforts of first responders to rescue thousands of stranded people.

While the storm did result in 88 deaths, much credit is given to the first responders and volunteers to prevent that number from climbing much higher. Holley’s accounts of the storm, stories about people who were helping strangers, a woman who started a rescue team from social media and so many more will move a reader to tears. He even goes as far as to make a statement that the Astros would not have won the World Series without the standard set by Houstonians that the team had to aspire to reach – and one that is hard to disprove. This is one instance where the non-sports sections of a sports book are so much more gripping than the chapters on the sport or team itself.

This is not to say that the writing about the baseball or the Astros is inferior. The accounts of all seven World Series games are filled with not only recaps of the action on the field, but stories from the players and even fans. One of the more entertaining anecdotes was the musings of a fan who attended the exciting see-saw game 5 which saw both teams take the lead and promptly relinquish it. The fan was seated just in front of the box where the Astros’ baseball operations staff was located (the staff affectionately called the “nerds” throughout the book) and noted that these “nerds” never bothered to catch any of this exciting game as they would be constantly looking down at their phones trying to find any new information on social media.

This story illustrates the new paradigm for both the Astros and all other major league teams – the reliance on statistical analysis for making decisions on players and game strategy. The Astros were one of the first teams to rely on this analysis almost exclusively and were struggling at the start, enduring three consecutive seasons with more than 100 losses. The patience paid off in 2015 when they secured a postseason berth and then the ultimate payoff in 2017. While the book doesn’t dig deeply into the nuts and bolts of this operation, Holley writes very informative chapter about general manager Jeff Luhnow and owner Jim Crane – the former for developing the analytics department and the latter for his approval and financing.

The only aspect of the book that keeps this from being a true five-star book in my mind is Holley’s account of the unfortunate incident in which Yuli Gurriel made a racially insensitive gesture toward Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish. After it was captured and reported on social media, the ensuring controversy resulted in Gurriel’s suspension at the beginning of the 2018 season and an apology. Holley wrote that there wasn’t much more about the incident after the apology, which was accepted by Darvish, but the gesture was, according to Holley, “bigger than it seemed”. That, to me, was an unnecessary comment as it was unfortunate but shouldn’t be constantly overshadowing the action on the field. Also, something that Holley did leave out was the gesture Gurriel made during his first at bat in game 7. Darvish was on the mound for the Dodgers and Gurrriel tipped his cap to Darvish, who in turn acknowledged the gesture with a nod of his head. My thought was if the two men involved could make peace and move on, why couldn’t the author do the same thing?

Aside from this small matter, the rest of the book is a terrific and moving account of a baseball team, its success and its attachment to a city that needed all the good news it could get during a very tough year. Baseball fans, especially Astros fans, will want to add this one to their libraries as soon as it comes out.

I wish to thank Hachette Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A great book about the Astros run to the World Series title and how they helped bring a city ravaged by Hurricane Harvey renewed life. It is also about the human spirit and the bonds of living in a big city and helping those who are in need, Holley is able to meld the disaster that befell Houston and the relief the Astros brought to many of the city's residence. One of the finest baseball book that I have read in the last few years.