Catastrophe In The Making

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Catastrophe in the Making

Author : William R. Freudenburg
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 9781610911634
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (116 download)

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Book Synopsis Catastrophe in the Making by : William R. Freudenburg

Download or read book Catastrophe in the Making written by William R. Freudenburg and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2011-08-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When houses are flattened, towns submerged, and people stranded without electricity or even food, we attribute the suffering to “natural disasters” or “acts of God.” But what if they’re neither? What if we, as a society, are bringing these catastrophes on ourselves? That’s the provocative theory of Catastrophe in the Making, the first book to recognize Hurricane Katrina not as a “perfect storm,” but a tragedy of our own making—and one that could become commonplace. The authors, one a longtime New Orleans resident, argue that breached levees and sloppy emergency response are just the most obvious examples of government failure. The true problem is more deeply rooted and insidious, and stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast. Based on the false promise of widespread prosperity, communities across the U.S. have embraced all brands of “economic development” at all costs. In Louisiana, that meant development interests turning wetlands into shipping lanes. By replacing a natural buffer against storm surges with a 75-mile long, obsolete canal that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they guided the hurricane into the heart of New Orleans and adjacent communities. The authors reveal why, despite their geographic differences, California and Missouri are building—quite literally—toward similar destruction. Too often, the U.S. “growth machine” generates wealth for a few and misery for many. Drawing lessons from the most expensive “natural” disaster in American history, Catastrophe in the Making shows why thoughtless development comes at a price we can ill afford.

Disaster Capitalism

Author : Antony Loewenstein
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1784781177
Total Pages : 435 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (847 download)

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Book Synopsis Disaster Capitalism by : Antony Loewenstein

Download or read book Disaster Capitalism written by Antony Loewenstein and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disaster has become big business. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies cash in on organized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining. What emerges through Loewenstein's reporting is a dark history of multinational corporations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world's most valuable commodity.

The Cure for Catastrophe

Author : Robert Muir-Wood
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096476
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cure for Catastrophe by : Robert Muir-Wood

Download or read book The Cure for Catastrophe written by Robert Muir-Wood and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We can't stop natural disasters but we can stop them being disastrous. One of the world's foremost risk experts tells us how. Year after year, floods wreck people's homes and livelihoods, earthquakes tear communities apart, and tornadoes uproot whole towns. Natural disasters cause destruction and despair. But does it have to be this way? In The Cure for Catastrophe, global risk expert Robert Muir-Wood argues that our natural disasters are in fact human ones: We build in the wrong places and in the wrong way, putting brick buildings in earthquake country, timber ones in fire zones, and coastal cities in the paths of hurricanes. We then blindly trust our flood walls and disaster preparations, and when they fail, catastrophes become even more deadly. No society is immune to the twin dangers of complacency and heedless development. Recognizing how disasters are manufactured gives us the power to act. From the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 to Hurricane Katrina, The Cure for Catastrophe recounts the ingenious ways in which people have fought back against disaster. Muir-Wood shows the power and promise of new predictive technologies, and envisions a future where information and action come together to end the pain and destruction wrought by natural catastrophes. The decisions we make now can save millions of lives in the future. Buzzing with political plots, newfound technologies, and stories of surprising resilience, The Cure for Catastrophe will revolutionize the way we conceive of catastrophes: though natural disasters are inevitable, the death and destruction are optional. As we brace ourselves for deadlier cataclysms, the cure for catastrophe is in our hands.

Facing Catastrophe

Author : Robert R. M. Verchick
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674047915
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Facing Catastrophe by : Robert R. M. Verchick

Download or read book Facing Catastrophe written by Robert R. M. Verchick and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author argues for a new perspective on disaster law that is based on the principles of environmental protection. His prescription boils down to three simple commands: Go green, be fair, and keep safe. He argues that government must assume a stronger regulatory role in managing natural infrastructure, distributional fairness, and public risk.--[book cover].

The Making of the Greek Genocide

Author : Erik Sjöberg
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1785333267
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (853 download)

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Book Synopsis The Making of the Greek Genocide by : Erik Sjöberg

Download or read book The Making of the Greek Genocide written by Erik Sjöberg and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion’s tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjöberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.

A Paradise Built in Hell

Author : Rebecca Solnit
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101459018
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis A Paradise Built in Hell by : Rebecca Solnit

Download or read book A Paradise Built in Hell written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

The Culture of Calamity

Author : Kevin Rozario
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0226725707
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis The Culture of Calamity by : Kevin Rozario

Download or read book The Culture of Calamity written by Kevin Rozario and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turn on the news and it looks as if we live in a time and place unusually consumed by the specter of disaster. The events of 9/11 and the promise of future attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, and the inevitable consequences of environmental devastation all contribute to an atmosphere of imminent doom. But reading an account of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, with its vivid evocation of buildings “crumbling as one might crush a biscuit,” we see that calamities—whether natural or man-made—have long had an impact on the American consciousness. Uncovering the history of Americans’ responses to disaster from their colonial past up to the present, Kevin Rozario reveals the vital role that calamity—and our abiding fascination with it—has played in the development of this nation. Beginning with the Puritan view of disaster as God’s instrument of correction, Rozario explores how catastrophic events frequently inspired positive reactions. He argues that they have shaped American life by providing an opportunity to take stock of our values and social institutions. Destruction leads naturally to rebuilding, and here we learn that disasters have been a boon to capitalism, and, paradoxically, indispensable to the construction of dominant American ideas of progress. As Rozario turns to the present, he finds that the impulse to respond creatively to disasters is mitigated by a mania for security. Terror alerts and duct tape represent the cynical politician’s attitude about 9/11, but Rozario focuses on how the attacks registered in the popular imagination—how responses to genuine calamity were mediated by the hyperreal thrills of movies; how apocalyptic literature, like the best-selling Left Behind series, recycles Puritan religious outlooks while adopting Hollywood’s sty≤ and how the convergence of these two ways of imagining disaster points to a new postmodern culture of calamity. The Culture of Calamity will stand as the definitive diagnosis of the peculiarly American addiction to the spectacle of destruction.

Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster

Author : Eugenie L. Birch
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812204484
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster by : Eugenie L. Birch

Download or read book Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster written by Eugenie L. Birch and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-01-09 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disasters—natural ones, such as hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes, and unnatural ones such as terrorist attacks—are part of the American experience in the twenty-first century. The challenges of preparing for these events, withstanding their impact, and rebuilding communities afterward require strategic responses from different levels of government in partnership with the private sector and in accordance with the public will. Disasters have a disproportionate effect on urban places. Dense by definition, cities and their environs suffer great damage to their complex, interdependent social, environmental, and economic systems. Social and medical services collapse. Long-standing problems in educational access and quality become especially acute. Local economies cease to function. Cultural resources disappear. The plight of New Orleans and several smaller Gulf Coast cities exemplifies this phenomenon. This volume examines the rebuilding of cities and their environs after a disaster and focuses on four major issues: making cities less vulnerable to disaster, reestablishing economic viability, responding to the permanent needs of the displaced, and recreating a sense of place. Success in these areas requires that priorities be set cooperatively, and this goal poses significant challenges for rebuilding efforts in a democratic, market-based society. Who sets priorities and how? Can participatory decision-making be organized under conditions requiring focused, strategic choices? How do issues of race and class intersect with these priorities? Should the purpose of rebuilding be restoration or reformation? Contributors address these and other questions related to environmental conditions, economic imperatives, social welfare concerns, and issues of planning and design in light of the lessons to be drawn from Hurricane Katrina.

Catastrophizing

Author : Gerard Passannante
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022661235X
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

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Book Synopsis Catastrophizing by : Gerard Passannante

Download or read book Catastrophizing written by Gerard Passannante and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we catastrophize, we think the worst. We make too much of too little, or something of nothing. Yet what looks simply like a bad habit, Gerard Passannante argues, was also a spur to some of the daring conceptual innovations and feats of imagination that defined the intellectual and cultural history of the early modern period. Reaching back to the time between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Passannante traces a history of catastrophizing through literary and philosophical encounters with materialism—the view that the world is composed of nothing but matter. As artists, poets, philosophers, and scholars pondered the physical causes and material stuff of the cosmos, they conjured up disasters out of thin air and responded as though to events that were befalling them. From Leonardo da Vinci’s imaginative experiments with nature’s destructive forces to the fevered fantasies of doomsday astrologers, from the self-fulfilling prophecies of Shakespeare’s tragic characters to the mental earthquakes that guided Kant toward his theory of the sublime, Passannante shows how and why the early moderns reached for disaster when they ventured beyond the limits of the sensible. He goes on to explore both the danger and the critical potential of thinking catastrophically in our own time.

The Shock Doctrine

Author : Naomi Klein
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1429919485
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis The Shock Doctrine by : Naomi Klein

Download or read book The Shock Doctrine written by Naomi Klein and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Author : Bill Gates
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0385546149
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by : Bill Gates

Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Trapped Under the Sea

Author : Neil Swidey
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307886735
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Trapped Under the Sea by : Neil Swidey

Download or read book Trapped Under the Sea written by Neil Swidey and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.” In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel—its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth’s deepest ocean trench—to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death. An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the book—which Dennis Lehane calls "extraordinary" and compares with The Perfect Storm—is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population’s rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk—how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred—and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe. Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel—behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible—lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice.

How the World Breaks

Author : Stan Cox
Publisher : New Press, The
ISBN 13 : 1620970139
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis How the World Breaks by : Stan Cox

Download or read book How the World Breaks written by Stan Cox and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’ve always lived on a dangerous planet, but its disasters aren’t what they used to be. How the World Breaks gives us a breathtaking new view of crisis and recovery on the unstable landscapes of the Earth’s hazard zones. Father and son authors Stan and Paul Cox take us to the explosive fire fronts of overheated Australia, the future lost city of Miami, the fights over whether and how to fortify New York City in the wake of Sandy, the Indonesian mud volcano triggered by natural gas drilling, and other communities that are reimagining their lives after quakes, superstorms, tornadoes, and landslides. In the very decade when we should be rushing to heal the atmosphere and address the enormous inequalities of risk, a strange idea has taken hold of global disaster policy: resilience. Its proponents say that threatened communities must simply learn the art of resilience, adapt to risk, and thereby survive. This doctrine obscures the human hand in creating disasters and requires the planet’s most beleaguered people to absorb the rush of floodwaters and the crush of landslides, freeing the world economy to go on undisturbed. The Coxes’ great contribution is to pull the disaster debate out of the realm of theory and into the muck and ash of the world’s broken places. There we learn that change is more than mere adaptation and life is more than mere survival. Ultimately, How the World Breaks reveals why—unless we address the social, ecological, and economic roots of disaster—millions more people every year will find themselves spiraling into misery. It is essential reading for our time.

Disaster

Author : Christopher Cooper
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1429900245
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Disaster by : Christopher Cooper

Download or read book Disaster written by Christopher Cooper and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on exclusive interviews, the inside story of how America's emergency response system failed and how it remains dangerously broken When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on the morning of August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring—despite all the drills, exercises, and warnings. In this troubling exposé of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block of The Wall Street Journal show that the flaws go much deeper than out-of-touch federal bureaucrats or overwhelmed local politicians. Drawing on exclusive interviews with federal, state, and local officials, Cooper and Block take readers inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during Hurricane Katrina—the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, the individuals who saw that the system was broken but were unable to fix it. America's top emergency response officials had long known that a calamitous hurricane was likely to hit New Orleans, but that seems to have had little effect on planning or execution. Disaster demonstrates that the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain. Washington is ill equipped to handle large-scale emergencies, be they floods or fires, natural events or terrorist attacks, and Cooper and Block make a strong case for overhauling of the nation's emergency response system. This is a book that no American can afford to ignore.

Five Days at Memorial

Author : Sheri Fink
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307718972
Total Pages : 602 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis Five Days at Memorial by : Sheri Fink

Download or read book Five Days at Memorial written by Sheri Fink and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter “An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death? Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award

Covering Catastrophe

Author : Allison Gilbert
Publisher : Bonus Books, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9781566251808
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (518 download)

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Book Synopsis Covering Catastrophe by : Allison Gilbert

Download or read book Covering Catastrophe written by Allison Gilbert and published by Bonus Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells what it was like for TV and radio journalists to report the terrifying story of their lives.

Averting Catastrophe

Author : Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479808482
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Averting Catastrophe by : Cass R. Sunstein

Download or read book Averting Catastrophe written by Cass R. Sunstein and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the “maximin rule,” which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of “Knightian uncertainty,” found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.