James Rodger Fleming, one of the most productive and pre-eminent figures in the history of meteorology, is next in line to answer two questions which are particularly preoccupying to many historians of this discipline: when did meteorology become modern and what changed to make it so? In Appropriating the Weather (1989), Robert Marc Friedman made his case for the years between 1898 and 1925, arguing that the so-called Bergen school around Vilhelm Bjerknes heralded meteorology's modernity by developing a dynamic, numerical prediction technique based on polar fronts and air masses. Kristine Harper affirmed the revolutionary effect of the Bergen school in Weather by the Numbers (2008), but focused her work on the relevance of computation in particular, extending the period studied until 1955. With his new book, Fleming now further prolongs this period and also the cast of characters. He argues that it took the first sixty years of the twentieth century to establish meteorology as a thoroughly modern science which integrated theory and practice, facilitated research on a genuinely global scale, and used new technologies to further explore the influences of the atmospheric layers on the weather. This development culminated in the establishment of the new interdisciplinary field of atmospheric science in the 1960s.

Well aware of the ‘pretty big history’ he tells, Fleming interweaves the biographies of the three men he identified as key protagonists to create a compelling narrative (p. 4). According to Fleming, Bjerknes (1862–1951), Carl-Gustav Rossby (1898–1957) and Harry Wexler (1911–1962) embodied the changes in meteorology between 1900 and 1960. All three were remarkably successful meteorological researchers, but Fleming makes a point of not portraying them as isolated geniuses, but rather as ‘institution builders’ and ‘extraordinary networkers’ (p. 2). Their respective teams thus receive adequate attention within the book. What is more, the three are also interconnected: Rossby interned with Bjerknes for one year in Bergen, and supervised Wexler's PhD thesis. Fleming devotes one chapter to each of them in chronological order and concludes with a chapter on the genesis of atmospheric science.

One of the merits of Fleming's work is the wide array of new sources from private and public archives. Figures like Rossby and Wexler have not yet been thoroughly portrayed by historians of science and this book finally introduces their work and legacy to a wider audience. Bjerknes's biography, in contrast, is well explored. Nevertheless, Fleming adds new facets by contributing Bjerknes's correspondence with the Carnegie Institution, which continuously supported his work from 1906 until a few years before his death in 1951. The documents shed light on how he viewed himself as a researcher and his relationships with his collaborators. A remarkable episode that would merit a more in-depth analysis is how Anne Louise Beck tried to promote Bjerknes's work in the United States already in the 1920s, but, despite being a highly qualified young meteorological researcher, was patronized and held back because of her sex. Instead, the large-scale introduction of Bergen school methods to the United States fell to her male colleagues.

Like Beck, Rossby studied with Bjerknes, but later extended what he had learned to include not just polar fronts but hemispheric flows more generally, oceanic and atmospheric currents and jet streams. Born in Sweden, but naturalized as a US citizen in 1939, Rossby played a seminal role in establishing training programmes for thousands of weather cadets and officers to match the meteorological education of the US military to that of the German Luftwaffe. Somewhat disillusioned by what he perceived to be political limitations of his research in the United States, he returned to his native Sweden in 1946 to model meteorological training and research there after his experience overseas. Wexler, of Russian descent, was a student of Rossby's and served as head of research at the US Weather Bureau between 1946 and 1962. He was in charge of its theoretical and experimental research programmes at a time when radar, digital computing and satellites drastically changed the technological framework of meteorological research.

Fleming's book is a treasure chest of insights into the lives of three leading meteorologists of the twentieth century. They were fascinated by the technical possibilities that opened up layer after layer of the atmosphere for them. The case Fleming makes for a noticeable shift in meteorology around 1960 is convincing: atmospheric science was established as a new interdisciplinary field and chaos theory put an end to hopes of ever calculating perfect weather forecasts. At the same time, Fleming observes, meteorologists transitioned ‘from charismatic leadership to committee work, corporate organization, and state sponsorship’ (p. 193).

A more specialized reader may be disappointed that Fleming cuts short his elaborations on questions of a more conceptual nature: how were knowledge and technology transferred between Norway, Sweden and the United States? How was the development of atmospheric science tied to ever-increasing investments from both the public (e.g. the military) and the private sectors (e.g. the Carnegie Institution, civilian aviation)? Did this change the focus of research and the kind of knowledge that was produced? An analysis of a more systematic instead of biographical nature would perhaps offer more opportunities to compare and contrast the evolution in meteorology with that in other sciences. But perhaps this is too much to ask of a book clearly intended to serve as an introduction to key technical and scientific innovations of meteorology in the first half of the twentieth century. What it lacks, perhaps, in epistemological and structural depth it makes up for with apt storytelling and a sense of biographical detail that will hopefully engage a more general public.