Social Science Disasters

In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.

In The Big Fix, energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis offer a new, hopeful way to engage with one of the greatest problems of our age. Writing in a lively, accessible style, the pair illuminate how the really big decisions that affect our climate get made—whether by the most obscure public utilities commissions or in the lofty halls of state capitols—and reveal how each of us can influence these decisions to deliver change.

A comprehensive catalog of the most devastating and deadly events-natural or man-made-in human history. If you follow the news it can seem like injury, sickness, and death are now constant, inescapable occurrences that threaten us every second of every day. But such catastrophic events - as terrible and frightening as they are - have been happening for as long as mankind has walked the Earth.... and even before. From ancient volcanoes and floods to epidemics of cholera and smallpox to Hitler's mass killings in the 20th century, humanity's continued existence has always seemed perilous.

On October 1, 2015, the SS El Faro, a cargo ship tall as a hundred-story building that made a regular run between Jacksonville, Florida, and Puerto Rico, delivering everything from razor blades to new Chevrolet cars, disappeared in Hurricane Joaquin, a category 4 storm. The ship, her hundreds of shipping containers, and her entire crew sank to the bottom of the ocean, three miles down. The sinking was the greatest seagoing US merchant marine shipping disaster since World War II.

In the spring of 2010 the world watched for weeks as more than 200 million gallons of crude oil billowed from a hole three miles deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Warnings of various and imminent environmental consequences dominated the news. Deepwater drilling - largely ignored or misunderstood to that point - exploded in the American consciousness in the worst way possible. Fire on the Horizon, written by veteran oil rig captain John Konrad and longtime Washington Post journalist Tom Shroder, recounts in vivid detail the life of the rig itself, from its construction to its improbable journey in the year 2000 to its end.

So Others May Live: Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers: Saving Lives, Defying Death is the award-winning untold story of the US Coast Guard's quiet but resolute rescue swimmers. From deep ocean caves on the Oregon coast to the panicked and chaotic streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, here are their stunningly heroic stories.

Psychological first aid, or PFA, is designed to mitigate the effects of acute stress and trauma and assist those in crisis to cope effectively. PFA can be applied in emergencies, including disasters, terrorist attacks, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second edition of this essential guide, George S. Everly, Jr., and Jeffrey M. Lating draw on their experiences in Kuwait after the Gulf War, in New York City after the September 11 attacks, and during the COVID-19 pandemic to describe the principles and practices of PFA in an easy-to-follow, prescriptive, and practical manner.

Atoms and Ashes recounts the dramatic history of nuclear accidents that have dogged the industry in its military and civil incarnations since the 1950s. Through the stories of six terrifying major incidents—Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—Cold War expert Serhii Plokhy explores the risks of nuclear power, both for military and peaceful purposes, while offering a vivid account of how individuals and governments make decisions under extraordinary circumstances.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster extend across the 20th century. After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Sewerage and Water Board believed that developers could safely build housing away from the high ground near the Mississippi. And so New Orleans grew in lowlands that relied on significant government subsidies to stay dry.

The U.S.-backed military invasion of Cuba in 1961 remains one of the most ill-fated blunders in American history, with echoes of the event reverberating even today. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial public insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, it soon became clear that the complex operation had been planned and approved by the best and brightest minds at the highest reaches of Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself.

Never before in the history of the world has more time, effort, and resources been invested into a single generation than the Millennials. Be it incredibly expensive college degrees, perfectly privileged diets, life-coping drugs, uncountable therapist visits, even bending reality so everybody was impossibly a winner, no expense was spared for the most pampered generation in human history. But $30 trillion and 20 years later we have the biggest failure of a human crop in the history of the world.

Dr. Andrew Furey, an orthopedic surgeon, was sitting by the fireplace at his home in St John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, watching TV after work, when dreadful images of the aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti burst in on the cosy domestic scene. Human suffering on an epic scale was being documented in real time. Dr. Furey spent a sleepless night, and woke knowing he had to help in some way. In what has been a theme throughout Newfoundland and Labrador's history, he found himself answering the call.

An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known, the Mississippi flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of nearly one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of blacks north, and transformed American society and politics forever.

With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case - disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.

In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis - the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. This Is Chance! is the thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster - and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together.

On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96: it crashed in a forest in France.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19 - its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it.

The Esperanza Fire started October 26, 2006, in the San Jacinto Mountains above the Banning Pass near Cabazon, California. It destroyed 41,000 acres and dozens of homes and cost the taxpayers $16 million dollars. But by far the highest costs of the conflagration were the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first engine crew ever killed fighting a wildland blaze. Fire and superheated gases had erupted in a freak "area ignition," sending flames racing across three-quarters of a mile in mere seconds, engulfing the crew and the house they were defending.

Filled with real accounts of the devastating power of hurricanes, this audiobook takes listeners into the eye of the storm - where it may be calm, clear, and sunny, but surrounding you on all sides are black clouds and rampaging winds. Here, you'll come face-to-face with some of the greatest hurricanes in history through firsthand accounts from people who survived these destructive storms. You'll see the frightful sights and hear the roaring sounds these witnesses experienced during their harrowing ordeals.

You have seen Robert A. Jensen—you just never knew it. As the owner of the world’s largest disaster management company, he has spent most of his adult life responding to tragedy. From the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, and the Bali bombings, to the 2004 South Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, and the Grenfell Tower Fire, Jensen has been at the practical level of international incidents, assisting with the recovery of bodies, identifying victims, and repatriating and returning their personal effects to the surviving family members.