Summer was pretty mild in my neck of the woods this year, but I've lived through enough scorchers to know how debilitating hot temperatures can be. Edward P. Kohn's Hot Time in the Old Town: the Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt is an intense narration of a killer heat wave that tortured New York City for ten days in August 1896. By the time it lifted, an estimated 1300 people were dead, along with William Jennings Bryan's shot at the presidency.
New York turned...