Federal disaster policy is an important but overlooked aspect of federal action that has provided a rich arena for pursuing our more general research interests concerning federal program implementation and management. May brought to the research task both a familiarity with the broad issues of federal disaster policy-having recently completed a book (May, 1985) about disaster relief policy and politics-and an understanding of the day-to-day workings of emergency management at the federal level. Williams provided the "imple mentation perspective" that undergirds the book, having previously...