Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: public administrators office, lower west side, heat wave stories, North Lawndale, Little Village, City Hall (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The New England Journal of Medicine

Like motorists who slow down to stare at the aftermath of car crashes, most people are fascinated by meteorologic disasters. The perils of weathering a hurricane, a tsunami's destruction of property, and the human drama of a flood all make for riveting tales of struggle and survival. Yet one kind of weather-related catastrophe -- a deadly wave of heat and humidity -- seems not to get nearly the notice given the others, despite the fact that it kills more than all the other kinds combined. Why heat waves are such a quiet menace and how social conditions contributed to more than 700 deaths during a week-long wave of unprecedented heat and humidity in Chicago in 1995 are the focus of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, written by sociologist Eric Klinenberg. The term "social isolation" is usually applied to those living in remote locations, but Klinenberg demonstrates that this unfortunate condition also applies to thousands of people (primarily senior citizens) in our nation's largest cities. And so it was in 1995. Thousands of Chicago's elderly lived alone (many of them in or near poverty), isolated in many ways and by many factors. When the record-breaking heat and humidity arrived and stayed, these men and women started dying, one at a time and quietly, behind closed, locked doors. The immediate reasons were apparent. Many seniors did not have air conditioning in their houses or apartments. Of those who did have air conditioning, many chose not to use it, fearing utility bills that they could not afford to pay. Fear of crime kept others from leaving their homes to use free neighborhood "cooling centers." Still other elderly Chicagoans knew, from a physiological standpoint, that they were hot but were simply unaware that they were in danger. Klinenberg shows in detail how the tragedy was compounded by many factors and interests, including a public health and medical establishment that did not anticipate the magnitude of the looming danger and local news media that treated the severe heat and humidity as little more than a novel topic for lighthearted feature stories. The author also examines key sociological factors relating to the elderly, including the perils of "aging in place" while the surrounding environment changes; the idealization and valuing of personal independence among seniors; and differences between men and women in the establishment of friendships and other interpersonal connections. Heat Wave is a fascinating book, in part because the social conditions that led to Chicago's 1995 tragedy still exist, for the most part, throughout our nation and its aging population. People are still at risk. The book is not without its flaws. Klinenberg strays from sociological analysis and into a politicized attack when he examines the 1995 response of Mayor Richard M. Daley and his administration. He makes far too much of the mayor's brief questioning of exactly what constitutes a "heat-related death" -- a question, I might add, that most of us had at the time. The author erroneously claims that the response of the Daley administration was driven more by public-relations damage control than by a desire to understand the tragedy and prevent further deaths and that a report issued by the Mayor's Commission on Extreme Weather Conditions was little more than "spin," when it was in fact the product of careful deliberation by leading figures in public health, medicine, gerontology, meteorology, and other fields. Indeed, the report laid the groundwork for Chicago's successful response to extreme weather, which was credited with saving hundreds of lives in the summer of 1999. The report has been widely requested by and circulated to public health planners throughout the nation. Other descriptions of the mayoral response are similarly off-base. As a deputy commissioner of the Health Department in 1995, I was there for every step of the action, in front of the cameras and microphones and around the table at meetings about emergency response. Klinenberg and his sources were not there. Klinenberg also puts considerable emphasis on racial disparities in the 1995 heat deaths. (The raw death totals indicate a rough parity between mortality rates in the black and white populations, but age-adjusted rates supplied by the author claim otherwise.) In his biography posted on the Web site of Northwestern University, where he teaches, Klinenberg notes his interest in the exploration of "race as a principle of vision, division, and domination." His focus on race is therefore understandable, but many do not see race as the risk factor that he claims it is. Its flaws aside, Heat Wave is a thought-provoking examination that challenges everyone in medicine and public health to look beyond our training to consider sociological conditions as risk factors. It issues a call for all segments of the population to reestablish those familial and social connections that we once seemed to have but now, all too often, do not. John Wilhelm, M.D., M.P.H.
Copyright © 2002 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

Review

A forceful account of what it means to be poor, sick and alone in the era of American entrepreneurial government -- Charles Taylor, Salon.com

A provocative, fascinating book, one that applies to much more than weather disasters -- Chicago Sun-Times

A trenchant, multilayered and well-written social autopsy of disaster. -- Micaela di Leonardo, The Nation

Klinenberg draws the lines of culpability in dozens of directions, drawing a dense and subtle portrait of exactly what happened. -- Malcom Gladwell, The New Yorker

Revealing and provocative. -- London Review of Books

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (July 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226443213
• ISBN-13: 978-0226443218
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #758,402 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting book on an event too easily overlooked., August 15, 2002

By	snowleopard (Oregon) - See all my reviews

Do you remember the heat wave in Chicago in 1995? The rail lines folded, electricity went out with rolling blackouts, some streets even buckled. The heat was over 100 degrees, rarely dipping below the 80's at night, and the humidity near 100%. But what most people don't remember is the horrific human death toll during that time. Over 700 people were killed in that heat wave that lasted nearly a week. But while the author looks deeply into the horror of this natural disaster, he mainly concentrates with precision on a few separate areas:

First, that heat waves kill more people annualy than all other types of natural disasters combined. Yet they receive little public attention mostly because they fail to generate the massive property damage and fantastic images produced by other weather-related disasters.

Second, most of the people that died were the elderly and poor, who died at home, with their windows often sealed or even nailed shut to prevent rampant crime in their areas. They had no air conditioning because they could not afford it, and little or any access to any social help because of their economic situation.

The author also looks into how the city of Chicago didn't come to grips with what had happened until the heat wave was well over, and that because of the social structure where the affluent have ample protection from such massive natural disasters, the elderly, infirm and poor will likely remain having none. And while dealing with the aftermath is much more costly, governments choose not to prepare for them with social programs which are often viewed as liberal pork or government waste.

A fascinating, well written book. It also contains many images, some of which appear is if taken from somewhere like Somalia. Eric Klinenberg is an sociology professor at Northwestern University.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Killer Heat, Killer Neglect, October 31, 2002

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

What weather phenomenon kills the most people in America? Hurricanes? Tornadoes? Floods? Add those up and they will still not total the deaths attributed to the real killer: heat waves. The other phenomena yield good pictures, and that is one reason you don't hear much about heat deaths. But according to Eric Klinenberg, an assistant professor of sociology at New York University, there is another, more subtle reason. Victims of a heat wave "are primarily social outcasts - the elderly, the poor, and the isolated - from whom we customarily turn away." In _Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago_ (University of Chicago Press), Klinenberg has looked at the week-long heat wave of July 1995, which killed over 700 people. (Another comparison: the famous Chicago fire of 1871 killed about three hundred.) In Chicago, the heat hit up to 106 degrees, with a heat index over 120. Cars broke down in the streets, and bridges, rails, and roads buckled. Even with the windows open, brick homes could heat up to 120 degrees. The heat killed, but it did not just kill randomly. In clear, objective, but often biting pages, Klinenberg shows the patterns of urban life that brought death to certain regions and certain social groups.

One group was the elderly, clearly disproportionately killed by the heat. This might be attributed simply to their bodies having fewer physiological resources to protect them. Indeed, the government of Chicago tried to explain the deaths of elders this way; the heat only culled those who were going to be dying soon anyway. There is no medical evidence that this was the case; they simply were unconnected with society, and when they died alone in their rooms, it was long before absences were noticed. Klinenberg argues forcefully that the Chicago government, at different levels, did not respond to the disaster as it would have a big fire or a train wreck. When deaths mounted, Mayor Daley was able to frame the issue as a "debate" about the rising number of deaths, when there was no scientific controversy about the matter. Human Services Commissioner Daniel Alvarez did a classic move of blaming the victim, saying, "We're talking about people who die because they neglect themselves. We did everything possible. But some people didn't want to even open their doors to us." The media also come in for criticism. They took up the artificial controversy generated by the mayor about whether the heat deaths were "real" or not. There was little analysis about which regions were being the most affected and why, and the official city version of how little could be done against an act of God was repeatedly parroted. By the time the reporters did a comprehensive story, it was "old news" and didn't run.

No one was more forgotten than forty-one victims whose bodies no one claimed or cared about. They languished in the county morgue until August, when they were buried in a huge common trench in a potter's field. Visiting the site in preparation for the book, Klinenberg learned that a few reporters had come now and then to see it, but no Chicagoans and no family members. Social and governmental forces can't control the heat, he reminds us, but they can make deaths easy to overlook and forget. His book is a pointed effort to keep that from happening.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tragedy on many levels, September 25, 2002

By	Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Eric Klinenberg's new book "Heat Wave" gives readers a tremendous insight into the Chicago heat wave of 1995. He approaches this tragedy from several fronts. He begins with an account of what happened during the several days of stifling heat and continues with a look at the social impact of living and dying alone, why certain neighborhoods lost more people than others and exposes a city ill-prepared to handle the mounting number of deaths. Klinenberg continues with an assault on the politics of Chicago, the response of the mayor and those around him and finishes with an adept look at the media's role and response to the deaths of over 700 people.

Although at times the author writes in a dry style he nonetheless portrays the Chicago heat wave as a catastrophic failure on many levels. Klinenberg gets down to the root of some socio-economic problems that beset Chicago and tells us the "whys" of their causes. Many things stood out as I read this important and often scary book, but one thing kept coming through....although heat waves are discriminating killers the solutions are there if right decisions are made at the right times, by governments and citizens alike.

A sad and ironic end to "Heat Wave" is told in the form of a senior editor at The Chicago Tribune who decided to relate this tragedy from both a human and social side. As Chicago cooled down his work went on. Unfortunately, only a small part of the story was ever printed as the paper decided that in the chill of November few readers would be interested in a story that had occurred during the blistering heat only a few months before.

I highly recommend this book. It is a service to help us understand what happened during July of that year. As the author points out, this could happen again.