Don Garden is a man who knows the full force of the weather: he lost his home and possessions in two separate bushfires in the space of two weeks in February 1983. Extreme weather events such as these jolt us from our complacency to remind us of our vulnerable place in the world. And, as Garden argues, such extreme climate events are expected to increase under anthropogenic global warming conditions. Guided by this concern, Garden explores the social and environmental impacts of late nineteenth-century El Niños on eastern Australia, the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. Garden’s book complements similar research by Mike Davis into the horrific impacts of this global phenomenon on India, China, Brazil and elsewhere in Late Victorian Holocausts (Verso, 2001). Garden’s work not only describes the nature and history of the phenomenon but provides an examination of how Europeans experienced these strange weather events in the antipodes.