Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Paperback)

by Ted Steinberg (Author) "In 1905, Mount Pelee erupted in Brooklyn, New York-Coney Island to be exact..." (more)
Key Phrases: tornado outbreak, hurricane problem, weather modification, San Francisco, Return of the Suppressed, Containing Calamity (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Steinberg has an unabashedly political agenda in this work, but that does not interfere with him making a powerful point concerning the economics of disaster preparation and recovery. He examines how many of America's worst natural disasters were made more devastating through economic decision making. Most of the time these decisions protect the wealthy and commercial interests while leaving the poor and minorities vulnerable. He shows how newspapers and even scientific publications after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake played up the fire to convince businesses interested in moving into the area that it wasn't earthquake prone. He points to how dikes that were constructed to protect towns like Hannibal, Missouri, were made more "cost effective" by being placed where they could prevent damage to landmarks, while leaving the poor and black sections of the town to the mercy of flood waters. This is an insightful work that raises serious questions about who really directs our philosophy of disaster preparedness. Eric Robbins
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Leaves us in no doubt as to the powerful role that environmental instability has played in recent history.... A sobering lesson in humanity's vulnerability to extreme climatic events, especially the impoverished farmer and the urban poor."--The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Steinberg has an unabashedly political agenda in this work, but that does not interfere with him making a powerful point concerning the economics of disaster preparation and recovery...This is an insightful work that raises serious questions about who really directs our philosophy of disaster preparedness."--Booklist
"This compelling book blows away many obscuring clouds of misunderstanding and denial in our national environmental memory. Steinberg forcefully argues that what we have called "natural disasters" have really been acts of social and economic injustice committed by government and private enterprise. He combines superb research with mordant wit and moral bite."--Donald Worster, author of Dust Bowl:The Southern Plains In the 1930's (winner of the Bancroft Prize in 1980), The Wealth Of Nature, and the forthcoming A River Running West: The Life Of John Wesley Powell.
"Powerfully argued and forcefully written.... Good old-fashioned, hard-headed scholarship, which confirms that some of the most savage critics of capitalism in US academia today are environmental historians.... Acts of God is the perfect book, in fact, to curl up with during the perfect storm."--Times Literary Supplement


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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195165454
• ISBN-13: 978-0195165456
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,133,003 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essay on Mismanagement of Disaster, December 27, 2000

By	Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Hardcover)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nature is the What, Culture is the Who--Lovely Analytic Account, April 21, 2008

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Paperback)

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

5.0 out of 5 stars Acts of God, June 30, 2009

By	Shirley Henderson (Castle Rock CO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Hardcover)

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.