Customer Reviews

Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America

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Ted Steinberg's book, Acts of God, is an interesting look at the handling of natural disasters in America. It shows how natural disasters may arrive from nature (as flood, hurricane, earthquake, drought, etc.) but it is the social and cultural context of American that truly turns these phenomena into disasters. This can result from such things lack of warning due to budget cuts, downplaying the effects of the disaster in order to support boosterism, or controlling relief efforts in way that hurts the poor, elderly or minorities. The unusually high proportion of death and loss of property of people in mobile homes is not, in fact,due to random, natural acts or some perverse vendetta against by natural forces against mobile homes but, instead, by purposeful acts by government and capitilists. These arguments are presented forcefully using examples from throughout American history. On occasion, particulary the chapter on weather control, the arguments can become a little muddied. It is, nevertheless, a fairly powerful indictment of the current system that will result in more disasters than it will prevent.

I am starting to think about a 2009 book on CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: Faith, Ideology, and the Five Minds (the later from Five Minds for the Future and I am constantly enchanted when I run across a vital reference to how culture is the disaster, not nature.

This book is a magnificent epistle on the folly of mankind and the duplicity of government, business and the media. The author of totally brilliant as he gently sets forth the myth that we are not responsible for acts of God when in fact we are the perpetrators of complex human, social, economic, and political fabrications and decisions that invariably:

1. Screw over the poor and those of color

2. Amortize high risks taken by the rich across the entire taxpayer base

3. Conceal, lie, deceive as to the actual premediated decisions that occasioned the disaster turning into a catastrophe.

I am reminded of that excellent work, Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series).

Here is "the" quote from the author, on page xxii:

"The official response to natural disaster is profoundly dysfunctional in the sense that it has both contributed to a continuing cycle of death and destruction and also normalized the injustices of class and race."

The middle of the book is a detailed but not at all tedious account of California, Florida, and the Mississippi flood plain. In all three cases calamity was treated as a cultural script to execute:

1. A political agenda on the poor

2. Conceal and deceive outsiders to keep investment coming in

3. Further land speculation, with insurance company as well as state government complicity

I am reminded of the two books, Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. Our country has lost its moral compass across all of its institutions. This is not new, the price is simply higher now.

The account of how a railroad magnate built a railway from Jacksonville to Miami (which was 200 feet of sand at first) and then on to Key West, with the taxpayer footing the bill, the state government giving away the land, and the speculation leading inevitably to enormous disaster and death, is riveting. Or at least captivating.

He lambasts the federal government for venturing into the political economy of risk, for trying to control weather from the 1950's, and for "writing off" the poor in their mobile homes. Land in hazardous terrain subject to flooding is cheaper, mobile homes are cheaper, the poor cannot afford to evacuate, this strikes me as something only a genocidal maniac would love: "natural eugenics," only a little connivance needed.

The author tells us that through the 1970's the federal government stunk at both forecasting and warning, in part because of poor budgeting for the National Weather Service, in part because of privatization, in part because of ineptness (e.g. not repairing critical buoys).

He states, and this did not begin with Katrina, but goes back 40 years, that the Federal response to disasters has been consistently pathetic. One explanation is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has consistently been a dumping ground for political hacks, with nine times more losers than in other agencies.

He explicitly blasts Bush-Cheney for lies in relation to Katrina, which was accurately forecast. Every POLITICAL level of government, from the chicken mayor to the complacent governor to the dumb-s..t FEMA director to the village idiot President failed us.

The books ends by skewering both Clinton and Bush for 16 years of deregulation of all industries having anything to do with public safety, allowing them to increase their profits by increasing the risks and costs to the unsuspecting buyers upon whom they were enabled to prey.

Not a pretty story, but I for one am starting to see the pattern of government and corporate deception, and that is why I have committed the last twenty years of my working life to creating public intelligence in the public interest.

I cannot remember all my past weather and climate books, but here are a few more links:
The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World's Greatest Challenge (Atlas Of... (University of California Press))
The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization

See also:
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters

I read this in one weekend for discussion in a graduate natural hazards seminar, lots of stimulating information-- a worthy, and friendly read for the professor and the student.

Have "natural disasters" become more destructive ... or has economic development caused this alleged paradigm? Ted Steinberg investigates and confirms what private developers don't want you to hear.

As the population grows and moves to more hazard-prone locales (ocean-front properties in Florida and along California's fault lines), humans are creating a supply-and-demand environment with major catastrophes looming on the horizon. Steinburg digs deep into the annuls of American history to expose how hazard vulnerablility began and continues to this very day. While this book was written pre-Katrina, it eerily foreshadows the 2005 hurricane season and precisely predicted the magnitude of destruction that Katrina leveled on the city of New Orleans.

While this book is heavy on history and research, it is readable even to the average citizen interested in finding out how we put ourselves in danger. Steinburg washes away political-correctness and tells it like it should be in the many topics he covers (impoverished minorities, weather control, and problems between local, state, and federal governments).

This eye-opening book is a must-read for anyone involved in disaster management or concerned about the current state of disaster in the U.S.

Ted Steinberg's sometimes heavy-handed diatribe against the real source of disaster in America (man)debunks the myth that God or nature deserve the blame. The environmental historian's thesis charges that cold-blooded class warfare was and is perpitrated by government and business interests against the dupes who don't know better. His polemic argues that government deception evades moral responsibility, thus natural risks are minimized and more people are actually put in harm's way.

I did enjoy this book, and in light of more recent events, learned from it as well. Part II details the rise of the guarantor state and indicts FEMA (familiar) with gross mismanagement. As another reviewer remarked, the chapters on weather control and the weather service began to lose me. While I recommend the book with some reservations, I appreciate the author's writing style. With a sardonic wit, he reports gleefully that FEMA had been turned into "a dumping ground for political hacks." Thus, Steinberg has created a particularly timely expose' of the abnegation of responsibility and rise of the nanny state.

This was an absolutely fantastic read. I am not one to normally dive into a book such as this when I can read a news story or watch a documentary about the same subjects, however the way in which this book ties together the many aspects of natural disasters and how the different socio-economic demographics are affected was absolutely spot on. If you are looking for a complicated read with a bunch of hard numbers and charts, this isn't your book. While this is a thought provoking book, it isn't a hard read by any means (I sat and read the entire thing in about 6 hours straight, combing every page). The facts are so real and abrasive that you become your own emotional connection to the situations described. Really a fantastic book!

I am a university student and read this for my United States Environmental History class, however this book would have been excellent to read even when I was still in high school, as it gives reality to situations like Hurricane Katrina and Mississippi River flooding and what the people faced.

EVERY AP Environmental Science high school student SHOULD read this, as this would have been VERY helpful when I took my AP test for that course 3 years ago...

A real eye-opener. Should be required reading from high school on up. Not only will it help people make better choices on where to live, voters might think twice about who they put in office and just how much those elected officials' pet projects are really going to benefit their community.

This is a brilliant book -- well-researched, incisive, and passionate. It should inspire all of us to think more deeply and critically about how social oppression manifests itself in the ecosystem.

This book is garbage. Steinbergs thesis is that evil white business class sticks it to minorities and the poor; and that there is no such thing as natural disasters. Disasters are really a capitalist tool to destroy and enslave miniorities and the poor. Dont buy it unless you have to read it as part of a class like I did.

When a natural disaster occurs, the focus of the tragedy is a pity for the victims and hope that the survivors can pick up the scraps to continue their lives. While some may attach some blame to Mother Nature, or even God, author Ted Steinberg would argue a different perspective. In his book Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America he wrote of numerous disasters that took place in United States history and attempted to show that they are "complex interactions between the natural world and social and economic forces," as opposed to being natural.

Steinberg's style of writing was helped greatly by his method of organization in the book. It helped to have the subsections within chapters to break down the topics. However, even with this, events may begin to blur together throughout the book, making it difficult to recall any certain disaster with clarity. This may be the result of his tendency to stress his argument rather than the history, which is his main focus anyway.

After the recent disaster from Hurricane Katrina (Which Steinberg's book predates), one may wonder why the people of New Orleans would want to rebuild in the same place that caused such devastation. On one hand, New Orleans is a port city and vital to our economy. On the other hand, New Orleans is below sea level and perhaps building in that location is begging for devastation. This book questions how dilemmas like these are or should be handled and is very thought-provoking for anybody with any political opinion.

However, one of the main downfalls of this book is Steinberg's allocation of blame. While he tries to come off as a politically neutral critic, it is apparent that he isn't fair with assigning blame. All throughout the book, but particularly in his one chapter subsection, Live Free and Die, Steinberg is an apparent lower class sympathizer. While he is quick to assign human responsibility to the government for the disaster, not once does he ever even imply that the lower class is responsible for their poor conditions.

The issue comes up that people living in trailers during a tornado cannot afford to live elsewhere, and therefore they don't have a choice. Should the government then use tax money paid by those who have worked hard to save those who mostly haven't? Steinberg's weakness is that these people did have a choice. The lower class, for the most part, has made decisions during their lifetime that has put them in financial devastation whether it is in education, work, morality, or budgeting. It may seem cold-hearted, but if they can only afford to live in a danger-zone, then they deserve primary fault for a disaster that hits them. In this sense, it becomes clear that Steinberg is not very consistent and is using natural disasters as a tool for socialist activism by attributing wickedness to the "bourgeois class" and capitalism in general.

Credit should be given to Steinberg for his deep thought, nevertheless. As a nation, how are we supposed to handle the forces of nature? Anybody who reads this book will find themselves pondering on the issues of prevention, aide, and the overall role of the government. Is there a difference between natural and man-made disasters? Whatever your opinion is, you will find the arguments stimulating.

Coupled with the rousing nature (no pun intended) of the text is the fact that not much is written on the subject of man and natural disasters in history. For these reasons, perhaps Steinberg's book is a well-suited textbook for a History of Natural Disasters course. However, the argumentative nature should cause readers to take Steinberg's opinion with a grain of sand.