Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Rethinking American Disasters.

Contributor(s): Publisher: Baton Rouge, Louisiana : Louisiana State University Press, 2023Copyright date: 2023Description: vi, 247 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0807179930
  • 9780807179932
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Online version:: Rethinking American disastersDDC classification:
  • 973 23/eng/20221214
LOC classification:
  • E179 .R47 2023
Contents:
Introduction / Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton -- A New World of disaster : hazards, environments, and experience in colonial British America / Matthew Mulcahy -- An incendiary war : conspiracies, disasters, and the American Revolution, 1775-1790 / Benjamin L. Carp -- An American plague : yellow fever in the United States, 1793-1820 / Sarah E. Naramore -- Misinformation and the politics of reporting on disasters in the early republic / Jonathan Todd Hancock -- The Great New York Fire of 1835 and the legal architecture of disaster / Jane Manners -- Brave men and mangled ladies : spectacle, sentiment, and exploding steamboats in antebellum America / Cynthia A. Kierner -- Spring floods and settler colonial ambivalence : a microhistory of Freshets on Wright's Island in the mid-nineteenth century / Tom Wickman -- Richmond's year of disasters : relief, reconciliation, and the end of Reconstruction / Alyssa Toby Fahringer -- The slow disaster of Jim Crow and Lowcountry hurricanes, 1893-1940 / Caroline Grego -- Layers of violence : slow disaster in the cancer alley anthropocene -- Scott Gabriel Knowles and Ashley Rogers -- A collision of disasters : COVID-19 and diabetes -- Richard M. Mizelle Jr. -- The myth of the 100-year flood : the language of risk and the 2016 Louisiana floods / Liz Skilton.
Summary: "Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays based on new research on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Contributors include leading historians publishing in the field of disaster studies, as well as junior scholars. Proceeding from the premise, generally accepted in scholarly circles, that there is no such thing as a "natural" disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts. Beginning with the environmental impact of European colonization and concluding with the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays individually and collectively introduce readers to the thriving field of disaster history. As the subtitle indicates, contributors examine disasters from the often-overlapping perspectives of culture, environment, and public policy. Some essays provide a macro-level view of disasters, emphasizing theoretical approaches and exploring how definitions, rhetoric, and ideas about disaster causation have evolved over long chronological periods. Other essays are case studies, or micro-histories, of particular disasters-an early nineteenth-century earthquake, a New York City fire, a South Carolina hurricane-that are compelling stories and also points of entry into the lives of communities and individuals as they endured disaster-related hardships that both revealed and often exacerbated existing social tensions and conflicts. The collection is a lively and original contribution to the field of disaster studies. Its relatively short and accessible essays will make it attractive to general readers and uniquely suitable for course adoption in disaster history classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Rethinking American Disasters features a valuable and up-to-date introduction that draws on the latest work to define "disaster," summarize both the history and current state of the field, and introduce essential themes to help readers understand disasters not only as catastrophic and often tragic events but also as revealing historical phenomena."-- Provided by publisher.
List(s) this item appears in: 2024 New Titles
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
BOOK BOOK NCAR Library Foothills Lab E179 .R47 2023 1 Available 50583020032938
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton -- A New World of disaster : hazards, environments, and experience in colonial British America / Matthew Mulcahy -- An incendiary war : conspiracies, disasters, and the American Revolution, 1775-1790 / Benjamin L. Carp -- An American plague : yellow fever in the United States, 1793-1820 / Sarah E. Naramore -- Misinformation and the politics of reporting on disasters in the early republic / Jonathan Todd Hancock -- The Great New York Fire of 1835 and the legal architecture of disaster / Jane Manners -- Brave men and mangled ladies : spectacle, sentiment, and exploding steamboats in antebellum America / Cynthia A. Kierner -- Spring floods and settler colonial ambivalence : a microhistory of Freshets on Wright's Island in the mid-nineteenth century / Tom Wickman -- Richmond's year of disasters : relief, reconciliation, and the end of Reconstruction / Alyssa Toby Fahringer -- The slow disaster of Jim Crow and Lowcountry hurricanes, 1893-1940 / Caroline Grego -- Layers of violence : slow disaster in the cancer alley anthropocene -- Scott Gabriel Knowles and Ashley Rogers -- A collision of disasters : COVID-19 and diabetes -- Richard M. Mizelle Jr. -- The myth of the 100-year flood : the language of risk and the 2016 Louisiana floods / Liz Skilton.

"Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays based on new research on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Contributors include leading historians publishing in the field of disaster studies, as well as junior scholars. Proceeding from the premise, generally accepted in scholarly circles, that there is no such thing as a "natural" disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts. Beginning with the environmental impact of European colonization and concluding with the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays individually and collectively introduce readers to the thriving field of disaster history. As the subtitle indicates, contributors examine disasters from the often-overlapping perspectives of culture, environment, and public policy. Some essays provide a macro-level view of disasters, emphasizing theoretical approaches and exploring how definitions, rhetoric, and ideas about disaster causation have evolved over long chronological periods. Other essays are case studies, or micro-histories, of particular disasters-an early nineteenth-century earthquake, a New York City fire, a South Carolina hurricane-that are compelling stories and also points of entry into the lives of communities and individuals as they endured disaster-related hardships that both revealed and often exacerbated existing social tensions and conflicts. The collection is a lively and original contribution to the field of disaster studies. Its relatively short and accessible essays will make it attractive to general readers and uniquely suitable for course adoption in disaster history classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Rethinking American Disasters features a valuable and up-to-date introduction that draws on the latest work to define "disaster," summarize both the history and current state of the field, and introduce essential themes to help readers understand disasters not only as catastrophic and often tragic events but also as revealing historical phenomena."-- Provided by publisher.

Questions? Email library@ucar.edu.

Not finding what you are looking for? InterLibrary Loan.