Ginger Zee is credited twice on this audiobook, once as author and once as narrator. That means the woman who, by the book's own account as quoted in the reviews here, checked herself into a mental health hospital ten days before starting her job at ABC News is the person who reads that sentence out loud. Brilliance Audio released the recording on December 5, 2017, and it lasts a little under six hours, which is a small container for a great deal of weight.
This listing calls the book Natural Disaster. The description calls it Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One., which is the actual title and also the joke the entire memoir turns on. Losing that second half costs a browsing listener the premise, because a meteorologist announcing that she is herself the disaster is a far more interesting proposition than a book with a two-word weather title. Subtitles go missing on listings all the time. Few of them are load-bearing like this one.
Nothing about the promotional copy is decorous. Its second paragraph uses the word Dickhead as a proper noun and appends a parenthesis promising you will not soon forget the name. The book is billed as heartbreaking, hilarious, and harshly honest, running from a deck on Lake Michigan to a storm-chasing dream at a national network, and the jacket behaves accordingly throughout. Whatever else this is, it is not a cautious celebrity memoir written by committee.
Something in the reviews keeps circling the same surprise. Sherry W had watched Ginger Zee on Good Morning America for a long time and never knew that behind the smiles and the lighthearted laughter was somebody who had once spent time in a mental facility. Granny3184 had been watching since the weekend edition and had no idea what demands a news organization places on its employees. Glen Moon came in as a long-standing fan. Judging by the responses, the book's central function is to correct an impression that television spent years creating.
Why Natural Disaster Works as an Audiobook
Five hours and forty-seven minutes of somebody reading her own account of depression is not the same commodity as an actor reading it, and this listing flags the distinction nowhere at all. The narrator field holds the author's name and nothing else. Granny3184, reading in print, writes that the personal style made it feel as though Zee was telling the story straight to the reader. On this edition, that stops being a figure of speech and becomes a description of the product.
Listeners should know how much ground gets covered, because the description is candid about the inventory: a lifelong battle with crippling depression, romances ranging from misguided to dangerous, a tumultuous professional path, and a ferocious tornado that killed a legend in the meteorology field. Add a first wedding canceled twice, then a subsequent romance with a gay best friend, both announced without a shred of ceremony. That is a great deal of life to fit under six hours.
Two votes is what the counter reports, and 4.6 is what the badge above it shows. Five people signed reviews underneath. A pair of whole-star ratings cannot produce that decimal under any rounding rule, and a tally of two cannot have collected the five opinions printed directly below it either, so the number is measuring something other than this column. The written entries run five, five, four, five, five.
Weak Spots in Natural Disaster
Most reviewers paraphrase. Meredith B, writing in February 2018, copies a sentence straight out of the book and lets it stand on its own: Ten Days before I started my job at ABC News, I checked myself into a mental health hospital. The next word in that review is Boom. It is the most efficient piece of criticism anywhere on this listing, and it also tells a prospective listener precisely what the opening chapter is going to sound like.
Both the earliest entry and the roughest one are worth reading closely. Julia Bunting posted on December 7, 2017, two days after release, under a headline that misspells indescribable. Sherry W's four-star review carries four separate typos across seven sentences and is still the most vivid writing here: a story described as eye opening, sad and joyous at the same time, with praise for the wit, the humor, and the hair. Neither reader was writing for an editor. Both were writing because the book got to them.
Four things raise this above the usual television personality memoir. The first is chronology, since the hospital comes before the career instead of after it. The second is the tornado that killed a legend of the field, which sets professional grief directly alongside personal collapse. The third is a wedding canceled twice because an inner voice kept saying this is not right. The fourth is the subtitle, which reads as a joke and is not one.
The Right Listener for Natural Disaster
The audience is wider than a network anchor's memoir usually reaches. Anyone who has watched a very composed person on television and wondered what the composure costs will find an answer here, delivered by the person who paid it. So will anyone after a depression memoir that is funny in places, since the copy promises hilarious alongside heartbreaking and one reviewer singles out the wit and humor for particular praise. The glass ceiling material is present too, and the page is not shy about claiming it.
Anybody who needs a memoir to keep its distance should choose differently. The description names Ginger-made disasters and a lifelong battle with crippling depression in the same breath as a nickname it prints without apology, and by every account here the tone stays that close for the duration. Listeners hoping for meteorology will find a career and not a science book. Listeners who find sustained self-deprecation wearing should weigh five hours of it carefully before committing.
That this recording carries the author's own voice is the strongest argument for choosing the edition. A memoir about being unable to forecast yourself gains something real when the forecaster performs it, and the passages the reviews single out, a hospital admission ten days before a network job, a tornado that killed a legend of her field, a wedding called off twice, are exactly the passages a hired reader would have to guess at. Whatever the counter above these reviews is measuring, the five people underneath it are in agreement about the book.
Common Questions
Did Ginger Zee record this audiobook herself?
Yes. Author and narrator are the same name on this listing, so the hospital admission, the tornado that killed a legend of her field, and the wedding called off twice all reach you in the voice of the woman they happened to. Brilliance Audio issued it in December 2017, at a little under six hours.
What is the full title, and why does the listing shorten it?
The description gives it as Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One., while the title field carries only the first two words. The missing half is the whole premise, a meteorologist admitting that she is herself the disaster. Truncated subtitles are common on listings ported between formats, and this one costs the book its hook.
How heavy is the mental health material in this audiobook?
Central, and named without euphemism. The description opens on a hospital admission and cites a lifelong battle with crippling depression, plus romances graded from misguided to dangerous. Reviewers describe the result as eye opening, sad and joyous at once. Expect frankness in place of clinical detail, with humor threaded through most of it.
Will this land for someone who never watches morning television?
It should. Four reviewers arrive as long-time viewers, but what they praise is the gap between the broadcast persona and the private history, and that gap needs no prior familiarity to register. The professional material covers storm chasing, a network career, and the demands a news organization places on staff.
