Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Disasters & Disaster Relief

It is the largest oil disaster in American history, and it could happen again. It is more than a story of ruined beaches, dead wildlife, corporate spin, political machinations, and financial fallout. It is a riveting human drama filled with people whose lives will forever be defined as ""before"" and ""after the gulf oil disaster."" Black Tide is the only book to tell this story through the perspective of people on all sides of the catastrophe, from those who lost their lives, loved ones, and livelihoods to those...

March 25, 2011, marks the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 146 garment workers lost their lives. A work of history relevant for all those who continue the fight for workers' rights and safety, this edition of Leon Stein's classic account of the fire features a substantial new foreword by the labor journalist Michael Hirsch, as well as a new appendix listing all of the victims' names, for the first time, along with addresses at the time of their death and locations of their final resting places.

After the vast destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a rare chance to rebuild, with an unprecedented opportunity to plan what gets built. As the city's director of planning from 1992 until 2000, Kristina Ford is uniquely placed to use these opportunities as a springboard for an eye-opening discussion of the intransigent problems and promising possibilities facing city planners across the nation and beyond.

In The Trouble with City Planning, Ford argues that almost no part of our usual understanding of the phrase "city planning" is accurate: not our conception...

The world is full of wonderful products and services that occasionally disappoint and even harm us. "Unexpected Consequences: Why The Things We Trust Fail" explores the reasons these failures occur, examining them from technological, human, and organizational perspectives. Using more than 40 recent catastrophic events to illustrate its points, the book discusses structural and machine failure, but also the often-overlooked failure of people and of systems related to such things as information technology, healthcare, and security.

As the book demonstrates, faulty technology played a...

"The Wenchuan Earthquake of 2008: Anatomy of a Disaster" gives a detailed account of the damage, seismology and tectonics of the event and discusses earthquake prediction, seismic hazard and risk management, the creation and implementation of building codes, and new practices used in rescue, relief and reconstruction. It will be of significant interest to researchers and practitioners engaged in seismology, geophysics, engineering, the social sciences, and disaster management and recovery. It also offers a valuable new and unique Chinese perspective with many insights for future mitigation...

Combining the experiences of ordinary people with urban politics and history, "Saving San Francisco" challenges the long-lived myth that the 1906 disaster erased social differences as it leveled the city. Highlighting new evidence from San FranciscoOCOs relief camps, Andrea Rees Davies shows that as policy makers directed various forms of aid to groups and projects that enjoyed high social status before the disaster, the widespread need and dislocation created opportunities for some groups to challenge biased relief policy. Poor and working-class refugees organized successful protests,...