Between 1800 and 1870 meteorology emerged as both a legitimate science and a government service in America. Challenging the widely held assumption that meteorologists were mere -data-gatherers- and that U.S. scientists were inferior to their European counterparts, James Rodger Fleming shows how the 1840s debate over the nature and causes of storms led to a -meteorological crusade- that would transform both theory and practice. Centrally located administrators organized hundreds of widely dispersed volunteer and military observers into systematic projects that covered the entire nation....