American Disasters [Paperback]

Steven Biel (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0814713467 | ISBN-13: 978-0814713464

Long after the dead have been buried, and lives and property rebuilt, the social and cultural impact of disasters lingers. Examining immediate and long term responses to such disasters as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Challenger explosion, American Disasters explores what natural and man made catastrophes reveal about the societies in which they occur.

Ranging widely, essayists here examine the 1900 storm that ravaged Galveston, Texas, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the Titanic sinking, the Northridge earthquake, the crash of Air Florida Flight 90, the 1977 Chicago El train crash, and many other devastating events. These catastrophes elicited vastly different responses, and thus raise a number of important questions. How, for example did African Americans, feminists, and labor activists respond to the Titanic disaster? Why did the El train crash take on such symbolic meaning for the citizens of Chicago? In what ways did the San Francisco earthquake reaffirm rather than challenge a predominant faith in progress?

Taken together, these essays explain how and why disasters are transformative, how people make sense of them, how they function as social dramas during which communities and the nation think aloud about themselves and their direction.

Contributors include Carl Smith, Duane A. Gill, Ann Larabee, J. Steven Picou, and Ted Steinberg.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Biel (history and literature, Harvard; Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster) here considers 13 human-made and natural disasters, both famous and forgotten, that have occurred in American history, including the 1789 famine on the northern border, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Great Chicago Fire, and the Challenger disaster. Each disaster gets its own chapter, which is not simply a straightforward account of "what happened next"; contributors put each episode into context and question the popular "lessons" that were often propagated immediately after. Similar recent volumes include Ted Steinberg's Acts of God (LJ 9/1/00) and Dreadful Visitations, edited by Alessa Johns (Routledge, 2001). The important difference is that those books cover strictly natural disasters and as such only complement rather than substitute for this work. It is uncertain whether the publisher will use the terrorist attacks of September 11 as a touchstone for advertising this book, but the uncanny timing of its publication is hard to miss. Recommended for all libraries. Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"While we have numerous books about specific disasters, the general subfield of disaster studies in the context of cultural history is just beginning to take shape, and this work will in a way mark its debut. . . . This is one of those rare books that is scholarly and intellectually sophisticated, yet because of the inherent interest in the topic and the literary talent of the authors, it should have significant appeal to the general reading public."

-Paul Boyer,Merle Curti Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Covering disasters both natural (hurricanes in colonial America, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake) and mechanical (the Challenger explosion, Chicago's deadly 1977 el train crash), these essays use contemporary media and political responses to explicate the cultural ramifications of the events. Novels published after the great Chicago fire of 1871 emphasized how the fire was both a punishment for the city's sins and also "the inscrutable workings of a divine hand" to make Chicago a more perfect physical city. Feminist writings used the chivalry of male passengers in the 1912 Titanic sinking to criticize 'the failure of men to protect women and children on shore,' while African-Americans' view of it as a 'white disaster' generated a large body of populist poems and songs that celebrated the absence of black victims…. Biel… has assembled a provocative and illuminating collection."

-Publishers Weekly,

"Not earthquakes or oil spills, but the symbolic interpretation of untoward events is under examination here. Writing across the disciplines with a keen eye for difference and power, these students of American society insist that disasters offer no single 'truth' or 'lesson' but occasions for articulating and contesting claims on the nation's future. A brilliant thread runs through the collection, illuminating how people make even the most destructive events meaningful—and do so very differently. The authors' consistent attention to cultural interpretations which resist capitalist values and dominant gender and racial hierarchies was especially rewarding. This volume encourages us to think more deeply about what is at stake when disasters unfold in American communities. It should top the reading list of disaster scholars entrenched in the empirical social sciences and attract a new audience of those passionately interested in people, place, and risk."

-Dr. Elaine Enarson,Disaster Sociologist, coeditor of The Gendered Terrain of Disasters: Through Women's Eyes

"A provocative and illuminating collection."

-Publishers Weekly,

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 422 pages
• Publisher: New York University Press (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814713467
• ISBN-13: 978-0814713464
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,153,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars COULD HAVE USED SOME NON ACADEMIC WRITERS, September 9, 2009

By 

Severin Olson (Hyattsville, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Disasters (Paperback)

This is an edited book with chapters on the Chicago fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Challenger disaster and others that have impacted US history. The idea was to look at how these tragedies have impacted American culture and psychology. How have they helped shape who we are as a nation? It is not a bad idea for a book at all. It's just the subject most likely to be written about by academics, and one that desperately needs non academic contributers.

The primary problem is that academic writing is as dull and dry as writing can be. It never addresses the issues of the common man or puts itself in the reader's shoes. Instead it relies on analysis of quotes and a few publications. Often the authors don't appear interested in their own material. Steven Biel, for instance, in his chapter says the Titanic was no more memorable than any other event! He critizes other writers of popular history who "reduce complex processes to single dramatic moments". But what is life if not single dramatic moments? This book could have used a few, as most of the chapters are quite dull. The article on the Galveston storm, by Patricia Bixel spills most of its ink on flood wall politics, ignoring more interesting aspects.

Another problem here is extreme left-wing bias, another weakness of academia. Kevin Rozario contributes a chapter on capitalism and disasters that insists the capitalists actually want disaster so they can make more money rebuilding. As he describes it, capitalism is actually a destructive, not a constructive force. Business leaders must like nothing better than to see their buildings go up in smoke. One would think the average shop owner would love for a youth to put a rock through his window. But the worst chapter in this regard is by Ralph Savarese on the Air Florida crash in DC. Savarese is a marxist made distraught by the fall of the Soviet Union. He blames the plane crash on, well, 'commodity capital'. In fact the chapter, one of the longest in the book, says little about the crash itself and focuses instead on the faults of the Reagan administration in fostering an inegalitarian society. Savarese links the accident to the firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers, even though the plane crashed due to icing on the wings! It is hard to respect someone who puts out such nonsense.

Of course a few chapters are fairly good. Ted Steinberg shows how San Francisco leaders sought to downplay earthquake risk after 1906, blaming the fire for all the damage. The most interesting chapter by far was by Andrew Hazucha. He describes the 1977 Chicago L train crash. Although not a truly major disaster, he brings it to life and shows how it shook Chicago in a special way. Unfortunately, though, such chapters are the exception, not the rule. Perhaps that's why so few have read this book.