"In 1936, after one of the coldest winters on record, North America experienced a heat wave that remains unmatched today. Thanks to a combination of an unusually warm sea surface in the Atlantic and Pacific, stagnating high-pressure, drought, and poor farming techniques, temperatures soared across virtually every state (and the territory of Alaska) for months. This summer, the sun aimed its deadly rays at more than 11,000 Americans and 1,000 Canadians. Air conditioning was uncommon, workers' rights were few, and in an age before high blood pressure medication, a lot of middle-aged adults, toiling in the sun, were literally working themselves to death. This was a summer in which there was almost no escape from the 100-plus temperatures, and woe to those who tried. Men, women, and children rushed into rivers to cool off, only to drown. Desperate people slept on roofs to catch a breeze, only to roll over and plummet to their deaths. Young and old, rich and poor, human and animal, it didn't really matter. If the heat wanted you, it was going to get you. The heat wave of 1936 sparked massive social changes and technological advances, as well as improvements in health care, and it ignited an ongoing impassioned national dialogue about climate change that continues, to varying degrees, to this day"--