”This is the problem with being a soldier. Someone always has to be the last person to die in a war.�
I’m probably not alone in that I know very little ”This is the problem with being a soldier. Someone always has to be the last person to die in a war.�
I’m probably not alone in that I know very little about the traumatic birth of the nation of Bangladesh. With The Vortex, authors Scott Carney and Jason Miklian fill that blank with a dramatic, largely first-person account of the formation the Bengali nation-state that is easily accessible to the average armchair reader and vivid with unflinching detail. Drawing from first-person testimonies of participants ranging from cyclone survivors to soldiers to American aid workers and high-ranking politicians, Carney and Miklian make the reader an eyewitness to history � and frankly, it’s often a ghastly sight to see.
Beginning with the Great Bhola Cyclone, Carney and Miklian paint a terrible picture of the storm’s fury, following young Mohammad Hai as he survives the storm, clinging to a palm tree while his family drowns helplessly just feet from him, trapped in their home. Unfortunately, the storm is just the beginning of the Bengali national nightmare as Pakastani government forces are mobilized just months later, not to clean-up a botched and inadequate humanitarian response to the natural disaster, but to crush a burgeoning Bengali political movement. Dacca city becomes a slaughterhouse as genocidal war erupts that eventually kills millions, through murder, starvation, and disease � and brings the rest of the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust.
Despite the complexity of the politics -- and they are insanely(!) complicated -- Carney and Miklian are able to make the geopolitical jockeying easily understandable even as they leave little to the imagination when recounting the sordid affairs, arrogance, or bloodthirstiness of a cluck of world-leaders. In fact, Carney and Miklian’s treatment of their protagonists � whether or not they end-up as history’s heroes or villains � is probably the best part of the whole book. The enormity of events is so massive, it would be overwhelming and numbing to tell it in numbers. By focusing on a few lives � those who survived � the story becomes nuanced, the atrocities stinging, the tragedy comprehendible.
Well-written and impactful, The Vortex is a worthwhile read. Having said that, this is another one of those books that in my opinion, would have been a little better without the ending essay. The authors admittedly have a very specific point-of-view (which is fine(!) but I’m not sure I need to be hit about the head with it in a final lecture. I mean, as I reader, I made it through your book; just let me draw my own conclusions, okay?
That nit-pick aside, The Vortex is worth a look by anyone who wants to better understand the plight of one of the world’s poorest nation (and how Bangladesh came to be that way).
P.S. For disaster enthusiasts, this book also has Neil Frank in it. THE NEIL FRANK! Of National Hurricane Center (and Hurricane Conference award) fame. Having been lucky enough to hear Frank speak, it’s a bit of fanboy thrill to see him mentioned here (and how I wish I knew he’d been to Bangladesh during this critical period. Would have loved to have asked him about it). As modern emergency managers, we do a lot of standing on Frank’s shoulders! ...more
The DLB-269 and all the men aboard her were floating victims. Their attacker would be named Roxanne.
In a contest between ship versus hurricane, take t The DLB-269 and all the men aboard her were floating victims. Their attacker would be named Roxanne.
In a contest between ship versus hurricane, take the hurricane.
With All The Men In The Sea, author Michael Krieger vividly captures the now largely forgotten loss of the undersea pipe laying barge DLB-269 and the daredevil rescue of more than 200 men from storm-tossed waters by a trio of tugs in the midst of Hurricane Roxanne which pummeled the Yucatan peninsula and nearby seas in 1995. Daring a hurricane and assuming that these monstrous storms will follow a predictable path has been the folly of many a mariner and (as my maritime bookshelf shows) doomed many a vessel to slip beneath the waves.
DLB-269, an unpowered ocean-going barge tasked with laying undersea pipelines for Mexico’s petroleum industry, made the decision to ride out an approaching Hurricane Roxanne at sea instead of seeking shelter in port. Towed by two tugboats, the aging barge with its multi-storied Clyde crane in the stern, initially dodged the storm � though the battering it took created serous internal flooding � but when Roxanna unexpectedly stalled, then turned back, the hurricane hit DLB-269 and her two small escorts with renewed fury, eventually sinking the barge and putting its crew into the water.
Krieger sequences a series of very bad decisions that led to catastrophe while detailing the steadily worsening conditions on the barge and its eventual swamping by towering 40-foot seas. Working from a number of eye-witness accounts, Krieger offers a vivid and terrifying picture of the last moments of the barge as men frantically leap into the sea, struggling to survive amid terrifying waves and spume, and of the heroic efforts of the nearby boat captains and crews to pluck men from the surging waters. It’s a white-knuckle survival story that is a tense as it gets and grittily described by Krieger’s expert pen. Remarkably, some 222 men were pulled from water by the heroic tugboats and even more crazily, 15 workers survived by never leaving the barge(!) -- clinging to the superstructure of the barge’s giant crane, which remained just above the waves even as the rest of barge sank to the sea bottom.
Shipwreck stories are a favorite of mine and this one is a good one, well-told, heroic, heartrending and dramatic. It, like many disaster stories, ends on a sour note as victims� families and survivors received little consolation or compensation after the tragedy. It would take years (and the 9-11 terrorist attacks and other similar mass causality events) to fully awaken the public (and government) to the damage post-traumatic stress from catastrophic disasters causes to both survivors and rescue workers.
And for everyone else, it would be a lesson about how the system really works.
In February 2003, a fire at Rhode Island’s Station nightclub killed 100 And for everyone else, it would be a lesson about how the system really works.
In February 2003, a fire at Rhode Island’s Station nightclub killed 100 people. Ignited by pyrotechnics lit as part of a performance by the band Great White, flames spread with frightening speed, engulfing the building in about 90 seconds. People died asphyxiated by thick black smoke, burned as a tar-like rain dripped from the ceiling, and were crushed and smothered in an exit hallway where people were packed so tightly together, they could not reach the nearby exit. It was one of the deadliest fires in U.S. history; the deadliest ever at a live music event.
With Trial by Fire, journalist Scott James offers a definitive account of the tragedy, ticking through the minutes of that horrible night and its aftermath with compelling detail, a master detective’s eye for accuracy, and a great novelist’s pen for painting vivid pictures of the many people the disaster touched � from victims and survivors and rescue workers to the band members, the club owners, government officials, media and attorneys involved in post-fire prosecution and litigation. Half of this book is a disaster-story about a heartbreaking tragedy and the resilience shown by its survivors; the other half is a horror story of a different nature about the insubstantiality of truth or justice and the reality of the machine-like gears of the legal and media systems that grind � often flawed -- toward their own ends.
The term ‘fair-and-balanced� may be cliché, but for once, it’s not hyperbole to apply it here as James delivers a remarkably objective story. He does not shy away from either the awfulness of the fire or the missteps by both the media and legal system, which arguably rushed to judgment, misinformed the public with information that was ultimately specious, and protected potentially culpable parties from prosecution. It’s a real-life legal thriller that should scare the bejeezus out of the average Joe. Once the big gears of the media and legal systems start to churn against you, controlling your own narrative (let alone sharing the truth) is a near-impossible task.
For the professional emergency manager (of which I am one), Trial by Fire is a MUST read. It is one of the very best studies on mass casualty incidents and their aftermath I have ever come across. James traces the long road of recovery, beginning at triage in the first minutes after the fire, through family assistance, victim assistance funds, and permanent memorials. Few have traced this trajectory as closely as James and smart emergency managers would be wise to take notice. Like the phases grief or dying, traumatic recovery occurs in steps with tangles and barbs ready to ensnare and hurt. It would have been nice to have this roadmap years ago before I ever donned my first FEMA jacket.
Be you disaster relief professional, true crime aficionado, or just a history buff, Trial by Fire is an amazing account, tautly told, and perfectly delivered. This was an easy five stars.
P.S. Was a fan of Great White in the 80s. Not so much anymore. ...more
I have read quite a number of disaster stories. But there are few books that do a better job of blending the t ”He may be the Frankenstein of the air.�
I have read quite a number of disaster stories. But there are few books that do a better job of blending the true story of an historical catastrophe with ‘weird world� Americana than Garry Jenkins� The Wizard of Sun City. Jenkins mixes the tale of the 1916 southern California floods that nearly wiped out San Diego with the biography of the man many would say made them happen: rainmaker Charles Mallory Hatfield. Taking a bet with Sun City politicos, Hatfield promised to fill the Morena reservoir with 10 billions gallons of water by ‘milking� the clouds with a potpourri noxious chemicals, burnt like incense under the leaden January skies.
Hatfield’s secret sauce worked just a bit too well � or maybe more likely a curious convergence of storms met over America’s west coast, combined, and produced a record-breaking deluge � drowning communities from Oceanside to Tijuana and collapsing the Lower Otay Dam, inundating the valley in a deadly wave of water, mud and debris. Jenkins deftly captures the lives of those caught in the unfolding catastrophe, collecting and adding lots of little and dramatic details that paint a vivid picture of the period, while sparing nothing of the magnitude or the horrors of the catastrophe that pushed many towns right into the ocean.
And while this is a great ‘disaster� book, Jenkins also paints an endearing picture of the pseudo-scientist Mallory. Coaxing rain from the clouds may have ultimately been flim flam (with Jenkins summarizing the pedigree of artificial rainmaking schemes back to the 1880s), but it’s impossible to finish the tale without taking a liking Mallory (as most of his contemporaries did). In fact, if there are villains, one’s a lawyer (no surprise there!) and the others the bureaucrats at the fledging National Weather Services. Mallory’s cloud milking might be bunk, but his research on climatology data to predict the best windows for precipitation make him about as a capable a forecaster as anyone else in this book!
Whether your itch is weather, emergency management or American folklore, The Wizard of Sun City fills those niches with a well-written, entertaining tale that � as we consider our own climate crisis � might also put a little perspective on things. Water woes are more than just a ‘now� thing.
“People talk about the right to life. I don’t talk about the right to life; I talk about the privilege it is to live because any one of us can be kill “People talk about the right to life. I don’t talk about the right to life; I talk about the privilege it is to live because any one of us can be killed at any time. It is so easy and it happens so quick. So if you haven’t done the things that you’ve always wanted to do, it’s time to do them.�
On a wintry night In October 1984, Wapiti Aviation’s Flight 402 crashed on approach to Alberta’s Grand Prairie airport, killing six and leaving four survivors to huddle around a makeshift campfire in the wind and cold, struggling to survive the night. The story, the crash, and the desperate search and rescue efforts make for compelling drama as author (and daughter of one of the survivors) Carol Shaben delivers an absorbing ‘disaster� book that is both gripping and uniquely introspective, tracing the survivors� experiences (and subsequent lives) in more detail than we usually get in these types of tales.
Shaben offers an almost forensic approach to the lead-up to the crash, creating a vivid picture of the people and conditions of that fateful night. The crash itself is hair-raisingly intense, the aftermath tragic, gruesome and desperate. The human dynamics are deftly captured as the survivors � a respected politician, the plane’s pilot, and a Canadian Mountie and the prisoner he was escorting � add to the edginess of the survival story � especially as the prisoner Paul Archambault is the only truly able-bodied person to escape the wreckage. Shaben deftly teases the small ironies from the event � from seat selection to a small act of kindness (such as the removal of Paul Archambault’s handcuffs for the flight) that ultimately become turning points for life-and-death of those aboard the aircraft.
The post-crash material � about half of the book � doesn’t have quite the ‘white-knuckle� feel of the early chapters, making the rest of the book’s pace seem slow by comparison to its opening. However, as a family member of one of survivors, Shaben has an unprecedented level of access to the four men as she traces the reverberations of the event through the course of the rest of their lives. Not all end happily. The bittersweet whipsaw of tragedy, redemption, and survival is moving to read unfold. I don’t think I want all my ‘disaster� books to dig this deep, but with this one, Shaben has the space, perspective, and connections to fully explore the complexities of ‘moving on� from a traumatic event.
Throughout the book, Shaben flirts with questions of fate and the mystical, especially as the survivors grapple with why they survived and others didn’t. That sense of fate lingers past the last page of this book as few tragedies have as perfectly placed or as good a eulogist as Shaben. I highly recommend this as one of the better ‘disaster� books that reaches well beyond the disaster. ...more
”In the end, it didn’t matter. The ocean had found another way in.�
Another thing I’ve learned in life is to never to challenge a hurricane. I’ve spen ”In the end, it didn’t matter. The ocean had found another way in.�
Another thing I’ve learned in life is to never to challenge a hurricane. I’ve spent a career in emergency management and, even after more than twenty years, the aftermath of these monstrous storms can still shock and daze even the most jaded first responder. And while my time has always been as a landlubber, I can imagine it must be far worse at sea, where the atmospheric engine feeding these beasts is still full of fuel: warm water and cork-screwing winds. My disaster library has a shelf of ‘ship-versus-storm� stories � Hurricane Mitch against the four-mast schooner Fantome and the replica-boat HMS Bounty against Superstorm Sandy -- both are recommended. Add to that Rachel Slade’s near-perfect Into the Raging Sea, a gut-wrenching, impossible-to-put down account of the American container ship El Faro’s disastrous collision with Hurricane Joaquin.
It’s not hyperbole to say that this is sea yarn like no other. Mic’s were installed within the El Faro’s pilot house, creating the nautical equivalent of an airplane’s black box, which began recording as soon as the ship left port and stopped just seconds before El Faro met its violent end in the raging waters of the Caribbean. Unlike other sea stories where investigators must often speculate ‘what was the crew was thinking?� or ‘did things happened this way or that?', the transcription of the last days of the El Faro is the chilling post-mortem of ghosts speaking from beyond the grave. It paints a vivid picture of the crew, their relationships, the flawed decisions, the terrible consequences, and the gut-wrenching end that haunts well past the book’s final printed page.
Slade weaves a taunt and tragic thriller that is near-perfect, white-knuckling your fingers around the spine of the book as El Faro pitches and yaws in gale-force winds and churning white-caps while tugging at your heartstrings as you turn the pages for those in the heart of the storm. Maybe it's just slightly here and there (for a few sentences at most) as Slade tries to conflate Presidential politics, guns and militias with the story of a shipwreck � that didn’t work for me at all � but setting aside that small peccadillo, this book is as much a heart-breaking high seas battle of endurance as it is a catechism on leadership. It’s about poor decision-making, the folly of absentee management, the curse of non-accountability, pressured leaders and courageous followers, the bear-trap of incorrect situational awareness in dangerous scenarios, and most damningly, the reality rift between those at the top and those on the scene.
Read this book! Whether you have a passion for maritime tales, disaster stories or just want the best seafarers� yarn since The Perfect Storm, Into the Raging Sea is compelling nonfiction expertly told. And though it doesn’t say it on the cover, it just might be one of the best case studies for managers in high-risk professions on how bad decisions are made, their appalling consequences, and maybe how to avoid the repetition of tragedy. ...more
“No one was untouched. Everybody lost something; many someone.�
The Great Hurricane of 1938 -- which wreaked havoc along the northeastern seaboard from “No one was untouched. Everybody lost something; many someone.�
The Great Hurricane of 1938 -- which wreaked havoc along the northeastern seaboard from New Jersey to Vermont -- is one of those undeservedly near-forgotten disasters. Swirling off the coast of the Carolinas, the unnamed major hurricane roared north along a low-pressure corridor into Long Island on a mid-September day, barreling through isle and then across New England killing 682 people –most of which were in Rhode Island � and wiping entire beachfront towns into the sea. Journalist R.A. Scotti’s Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 recovers this monstrously historic storm from relative obscurity, capturing the tempest in all its meteorological wonder and in its heart-rending human consequences.
For the weather buffs out there, Scotti gives a good portrayal of the difficulties of early weather forecasting in the days before satellites and computer models as well as some of the disastrous institutional biases within the national weather bureau that (in this instance) buried the report of a young ingenue forecaster who accurately predicted the massive storm’s deadly track. And while the forecasting information, the hurricane science, and the historical backstory of the opening chapters are okay, it’s when the storm hits that Scotti delivers the tour de force.
With no warning, residents of the coastal states were trapped on beaches, boats, trains and causeways and in shoreline vacation homes. The water rose in such a rush that when railroad engineers stepped from their train to inspect a trestle, they recalled the water just covering their shoes. To their horror, it was hip high just minutes later! Scotti relates the harrowing tales of coastal homes disintegrating under the onslaught of wind and wave, families and debutantes pushed adrift across Narraganset Bay on bobbing rooftops that scudded from the barrier island to the far shore, of people plucked from the flooded streets of downtown Providence where the water reached 17 feet deep in some places, to the bitterly sad tale of a school bus stranded on the causeway between Jamestown and Beavertail island as the hurricane’s storm surge � towering well over the roof of the bus � engulfs the yellow truck and the children seeking to escape it.
With many ‘big disaster� books the scope of such overwhelming tragedy is ultimately hard to portray in mere words. Scotti does strive to give the reader that big picture, but it is (wisely enough) these small, human-centered vignettes that in their tiny tragedies paint the full picture of the anguish unleashed amid the maelstrom.
As disaster histories go, this is a first-rate eulogy for those who lived and died amid the storm’s fury. And a worthy addition to any disaster reader or emergency manager’s bookshelf. ...more
”Manhattan Island was an inferno of brick and stone radiating heat deadly in its intensity. And over all, gray as the presence of death which it held, ”Manhattan Island was an inferno of brick and stone radiating heat deadly in its intensity. And over all, gray as the presence of death which it held, was the pall of humidity.�
There are some things I liked about Edward P. Kohn’s Hot Time in the Old Town.
The book tells the story of the great New York heat wave of 1886, which claimed some 1,300 lives in the city. For the emergency manager and the amateur disaster buff (like me!), Kohn gets a lot of points for his observations on the nature of climatological catastrophe and the public perception of risk. Drown more than a thousand people in a hurricane and the event is etched in the history books. Extreme heat, on the other hand, kills many more people than tropical storms or tornadoes in an average year but seldom gets the same amount of press because of its insidious invisibility. Kohn does a capable job then of rescuing the 1886 catastrophe from obscurity.
Where the book goes astray (for me anyway) is in the politics. Admittedly, it’s there in the sub-title: The Great Heat Wave of 1886 and the making of Theodore Roosevelt, but the subplot of Roosevelt’s fledging political career (coupled with the esoterica of 1880s party politics and the ‘bimetallism� debate) smothers the narrative in a scratchy blanket that feels a lot like padding. I think Kohn made a mistake in trying to turn the spotlight on Roosevelt because the more interesting political slant � at least as it connects to weather � is in the contrasting campaign strategies of future U.S. President William McKinley and his opponent William Jennings Bryant. Bryant’s failed New York City speech, delivered in a sweltering Madison Square Garden, is compelling and not the first example of nature (and natural disaster) influencing a presidency. That plot line (coupled with heat wave) probably would have been enough.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, feels like a distraction, perhaps better suited to a notable cameo. Roosevelt’s innovative ‘free ice� distributions during the height of the heat wave do mark an important step on the road toward greater government responsibility for emergency management. So in that, he does deserve mention ... but beyond that first pioneer effort, the future President doesn’t exactly add much to the book.
Final Verdict: If your profession (or passion) is disaster management than Hot Time in the Old Town may be for you, describing another little notch in the American timeline of the development of emergency management. For the casual reader, though, the heavy political history might be hard to get through. I wish this one had been a bit leaner, sidelining Roosevelt for a tighter narrative on the heat wave and the disastrous consequences it had on the presidential bid of William Jennings Bryant.
P.S. One nice little anecdote in the book concerns the Weather Bureau’s man in New York ... William Dunn. In a bit of reversal to what’s going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian and the controversy over doctored forecast maps, Kohn reports that after a week of unbearable heat, Dunn had given up answering his phone. Exhausted by reporters� inquiries about the record temperatures, the weatherman took a trip out of the sweltering city to the breezy eastern tip of Long Island to ‘recalibrate instruments.� “When Dunn he quits his post things must be in a bad way,� the New York World paper reported. “And they are.� ...more
“The worldwide sailing community refer to ‘The Hobart� as their Everest and agree no race is more difficult on men and boats.�
Writer Martin Dugard giv “The worldwide sailing community refer to ‘The Hobart� as their Everest and agree no race is more difficult on men and boats.�
Writer Martin Dugard gives a gripping account of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race that turned tragic as the racing fleet encountered unexpected and horrifically dangerous weather in the Pacific Ocean and Bass Strait (that channel that separates Australia from Tasmania). Of the 115 yachts that entered the 1998 race, only 44 completed it. Five boats sank, six men were killed, seven craft were abandoned, and 55 sailors had to be rescued at sea with the rest of fleet making emergency landings along the Australian coast.
Dugard gives a white-knuckle account of the men and boats as they battle an increasingly ferocious storm, painting a grim picture as the small craft face raging waves, cold and howling winds. His accounts of the sailors� struggles aboard the floundering yachts are particularly riveting (and poignantly tragic in many cases) coupled with the stories of the aerial rescue teams that dared the storm to pluck men from the raging seas. For the layman (and non-Australian), Dugard also provide an excellent overview of the race, its cultural potency, and inherent dangers while picking over the many things that went wrong and helped create the tragedy from poor weather forecasting, to government bureaucracy, to the race and route secrecy that is part and parcel of any seagoing competition.
This was good � maybe my only slight being Dugard’s style. Short sentence structure coupled with use of the present tense made the narrative pace a bit choppy. As I got past the first chapter, the rhythm evened out, but present tense for nonfiction isn’t my favorite.
Final Verdict: A good one for all disaster and maritime aficionados. The tale is little known (at least from my point of view) in the United States, and Dugard does a great job of giving the reader the full scope of the disaster, skipping from boat to embattled boat, across hundreds of miles of churning waves. ...more
The conclusion is inescapable: the Mormon catastrophe of 1856 remains far and away the most deadly in the history of westward migration in the United The conclusion is inescapable: the Mormon catastrophe of 1856 remains far and away the most deadly in the history of westward migration in the United States.
Author David Roberts delivers a gripping history of the great Mormon handcart tragedy of 1856, recounting the tragic tale of five waves of settlers who emigrated from western Europe to Bringham Young’s theocratic Utah territory not by wagon train or mule, but by pushing and pulling hastily constructed wooden carts � across more than 1,300 miles of empty plains, icy rivers and rocky mountains. Caught in an early winter snow, the exhausted and famished men, women and children of the final two waves of handcart pioneers become trapped amid cold and ice, facing slow starvation and death.
This is simply a GREAT history book as Roberts digs deep into both the journals of these early settlers (whose reminisces are both riveting and poignant) and later histories � quite a few of which were whitewashed. The narrative is pretty damning of early Mormon church leaders (whose handcart emigration plan was inherently flawed) and Roberts dissects inter-church politics with amazing finesse. There’s also no better executive summary of the roots and travails of the early Mormon church than Roberts� 'Chapter Two: Finding Zion', which provides a wonderfully rich introduction to the genesis of the Church of Latter Day Saints, its founders, and its early westward exodus.
Perhaps the book’s only flaw is that by the final chapter or so of the book, Roberts may be just a bit too zealous in prosecuting his case against the Mormon leadership. Make no mistake ... Roberts's aim is a deadly bullseye as he stacks the evidence against Young and his bishops as bearing the blame for the tragedy that unfolded on the plains. Just a bit more attention on their part could have spared many people a lot of terrible suffering and death. It's more a construction issue as I felt this this leg of the narrative might have gone ten to twenty pages too long -- a minor point in otherwise compelling narrative.
Final Verdict: What a great way to start the year! A first rate history book that recounts a largely forgotten historical incident of magnitude and consequence, masterfully told, deep in scholarship, but free from dull pedantry. Armchair history buffs of America’s westward expansion should give this one a look.
P.S. I seldom salivate over an author's bibliography, but Roberts has a good one: The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion That Drive the Spaniards Out of the Southwest; Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World; True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna and Great Exploration Hoaxes are all going on my 'to read' list!...more
Imagine if every time you experienced a slight upset stomach you knew that there was an entirely reasonable chance you’d be dead in forty-eight hours. Imagine if every time you experienced a slight upset stomach you knew that there was an entirely reasonable chance you’d be dead in forty-eight hours.
Apparently, this real-life John Snow did indeed know something.
Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map is a historical whodunit pitting a physician and clergyman against an invisible microbial killer that would take the lives of more than 600 residents of London’s Soho district in 1854. Johnson weaves a compelling epidemiological mystery amid a grim and gritty picture of a city that is literally drowning in its own filth. While the disease outbreak � and the poignant toll its takes on whole families � remains the centerpiece of the book, Johnson weaves a generally engaging tale of excrement, sewers, city planning, ‘miasma� theory, cholera (spoiler � the bacterium did it!), and the triumph of the scientific method (and visual presentation skills) over institutionalized bunkum.
Johnson is rather good in drawing connections � much like the historical John Snow � between a far-ranging smorgasbord of facts, creating a kind of ‘theory of everything� as he traces the outbreak of the epidemic and the subsequent investigations. The style puts a lot of the author ‘in the book� and, while I generally like my history a bit more traditional, Johnson is an enlightening narrator for all of the book’s seven main chapters.
Things do, however, get tedious in the conclusion (which, with the epilogue, is some 50 pages long � about a fifth of the overall book!) as Johnson gives a lengthy essay on the efficacy of cities. I got bored quickly with this � which at times felt a bit like a bit of a harangue � as the virtues of urban density (cool stores, more energy efficient than those wasteful small-town hamlets, and so much more accepting) get pretty heavily extolled. I remember the same thing happening with Lisa Alter’s Blood Fued which also veered into ‘now-let-me-prove-a-point� territory toward the end. As someone who just wants the titular history story, these kind of things quickly turn me off.
Final Verdict: So � great book � in my opinion � up until the end. If it’s the epidemic and Snow’s detective work that brings you to these pages (and you are the type of person who can comfortably quit a book before finishing ... sadly I’m not), you can probably close the covers at page 213 once Dr. Snow gets out of his ‘gully-hole.� Otherwise, a four or five star book that soured to a three for me based on the last forty pages or so. ...more
I started reading Stephen Baxter’s Flood as Atlanta braved three or four days of cold, wet rain. The unending patter of the water Drowning Planet Earth
I started reading Stephen Baxter’s Flood as Atlanta braved three or four days of cold, wet rain. The unending patter of the water added a nice bit of ambiance to this one. As Baxter’s prose battered London with a superstorm, it wasn’t hard to imagine a drowning world as the rain formed giant, moat-like puddles around my house. As disaster books go, Flood is an ambitious opus � literally covering the world with rising seas � adventure mixing with sci-fi opera and a pinch of Mad Max thrown in toward the end.
And for the most part, it’s a good read. Telling an epic in one volume is not easy and Baxter crams a lot into 500 pages, a globe-hopping ‘end-of-the-world� history as told through the eyes of four former hostages rescued just in time for the world to go all ‘Atlantis� on them. While the breadth and width of the story is impressive and the pace generally keeps the plot afloat, it doesn’t always work. Lots of key things tend to happen off-camera and there are few chunks of exposition that feel like wading through a science textbook. Still the dénouement is impressively poignant as Baxter pens a final requiem for planet Earth. It’s a tender, heart-breaking final chapter.
The book does leave a few loose ends and these actually worked for me. With the world sinking away, it certainly made some sense that there’d be information degradation. But then I see from the ŷ feed that are apparently � sequels? Not sure how I feel about that. As an ‘end of the world� book, I kind of feel like maybe this should have been ‘the end� and I can’t say that I feel compelled to keep going. But no one is forcing me into book two either and as a standalone disaster book, Flood is good enough. ...more
New Madrid: Nightmare of the Modern Emergency Manager.
Ask most Americans where earthquakes happen and they will probably point you to California. But, New Madrid: Nightmare of the Modern Emergency Manager.
Ask most Americans where earthquakes happen and they will probably point you to California. But, while not as prolific as the Golden State’s temblors, there are other areas of the country where earthquake danger lurks � the Cascadia Subduction Zone of the Pacific Northwest and Charleston, South Carolina, for example. And smack dab in the middle of the American heartland, deep beneath the Mississippi River valley lies the New Madrid Faultline. On December 16, 1811, the fault shuddered, releasing a catastrophic series of more than 2,000 quakes � three of which would have measured more than 8.0 on the Richter scale.
Only the scarcity of population in the area kept the New Madrid Earthquake from being one of the world’s worst natural disasters.
With When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, historian Jay Feldman plays archeological detective, piecing together from a relatively scarce trove of records the story of one of North America’s greatest earthquakes and the destruction wrought along the Mississippi River valley. And while first-hand accounts of devastation may be slim, there’s actually a lot more detail to be had that I would have imagined. Feldman weaves a rather gripping account of the horrors unleashed on the little frontier settlement of New Madrid and upon the numerous boats plying the Mississippi River when the ground rumbled.
Feldman also makes up for the paucity of information on the earthquake itself by using the disaster as a locus point against three other historical threads: the U.S. government’s ongoing war with the Native American Chief Tecumseh, the maiden voyage of the first Mississippi steamboat New Orleans (which would famously ride the backflowing current of the Mississippi northwards as the New Madrid Earthquake temporarily reversed the river’s flow), and a hideously macabre murder on the eve of quakes perpetrated by none other than Thomas Jefferson’s nephews. It would have been all too easy for this material to feel simply like filler, but I found the Feldman’s painting of the age � of frontier wars, scientific advancement, and murder � compelling, richly detailing the time period in which the quakes occurred, and creating context that gave the disaster a compelling context.
(The murder and dismemberment of the poor slave named George is particularly compelling � a real life echo of Poe’s House of Usher -- as the very walls of the Kentucky plantation crumble to give-up evidence of the horrific crime, the courthouse itself trembling with aftershocks during the trial. Only the battles with Tecumseh feels just a bit too long in tooth by book’s end).
Verdict: The historical fat may be a bit thick for the diehard 'disaster-book-buff' but for the armchair historian When the Mississippi Ran Backwards is a wonderful read. For the modern emergency manager, chapter eight of the book � when ‘all nature was in a state of dissolution� � is must reading and should send chills down the spine as one considers the ‘what if� of a similar catastrophic quake hitting the same area of the country � now far more densely populated � today.
P.S. Live in the mid-Mississippi River Valley? Get ready for the next New Madrid Earthquake � yes, it could happen! � now. Check out the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (at ) or the The Great Shakeout! (at ) for real-life resources! ...more
“Find a parking spot, brother,� he said with a dismissive wave of his hand at the world outside our car. “We’re already there.�
Jo “Go to hell Marcus.�
“Find a parking spot, brother,� he said with a dismissive wave of his hand at the world outside our car. “We’re already there.�
Joe McKinney’s Dead City starts out well enough � with police office Eddie Hudson facing off against the first round of an emerging zombie apocalypse -- but the book disappointingly loses direction at about the halfway point, before limping into a rather weak finale. I blame Eddie’s sidekick, Marcus, for the missed opportunity because the momentum stalls right about the time he shows up.
Plus, Marcus is a misogynistic jerk. I’m glad he died.
Anyhow � so the good part is that the book begins just fine as Hudson and the rest of the local p.d. respond to a ‘drunk and disorderly� call � only to find that its flesh that’s being gobbled and not booze. For the first half of the book, the pace is a pounding, panting cross country run as Hudson dodges the growing undead horde to head to the rescue of his wife and infant son.
But � then Eddie kind of gets distracted � which I didn’t buy from guy who said his sole purpose in life was to be a dad � to blunder about with his buddy Marcus � who is such an insensitive moron that any bromance seems farcical � wrecking car after car, like two stooges playing Mario Kart. By the time we finally get Eddie steered back on track, it’s pretty deus ex machina � the cell phone suddenly works! � and the ending kind of whimpers out without any real explanation as to what caused the zombie outbreak, how it spread so quickly, or � as Eddie mentions in the story � why these undead seemed able to track and swarm the living so easily.
Of course there are sequels ... and I did like this one enough to check them out ... but the plotting could have been a lot tighter.
Verdict: While I didn’t love this book, I did really like the first half and McKinney certainly shows enough promise that I’ll be giving the sequel -- already on my book shelf -- a go. There’s good stuff here. It just kind of got lost in an extenuated, mid-story chase scene that was utimately kind of pointless (you know � like Star Wars: the Last Jedi).
P.S. Also have to bang a bit on the book jacket -- which way oversells the idea that this story is connected to a cataclysmic hurricane. Zombies wading through the half-submerged streets of Houston is uncomfortably chilling (with the real-world ghost of Hurricane Harvey still fresh in my memory). However, Dead City takes places in San Antonio, not flooded Houston and the impacted of the hurricane is really just a minor plot point. Might be picked up in a sequel, but the connection -- cool as it sounds -- is pretty tenuous in this one. ...more
He studied her for a moment and then said, “You don’t need to ask a man why he’d be moved to do a thing like that. You don’t need to ask that at all. He studied her for a moment and then said, “You don’t need to ask a man why he’d be moved to do a thing like that. You don’t need to ask that at all. You damn well know why.�
By the end of this year, I had fallen into a bit of a reading rut and as I opened Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, I was expecting another haunted hotel story � not that there’s anything wrong with those ... I rather enjoyed Bentley Little’s The Resort just a few weeks back. I was also afraid that I knew exactly where this one was going by the first page of Chapter 1. As a guy who’s rather familiar with the history of real world disasters, you see death hovering over a group of men headed to the Florida Keys in September 1935, I was pretty certain I knew where this was all going. I almost closed it with a yawn.
Thank goodness I kept reading!
With just a page turn or two later, Koryta had completely played me like a chump � I had no idea where this going! � this was like stepping on an elevator and assuming you were headed to floor number two only to find yourself in a surprise freefall instead with adrenaline pumping, heart pounding � The Cypress House is a wild rush.
Koryta spins a hard-boiled, crime thriller that is mixed with just the right amount of the supernatural � a pulpy, page-turner that keeps you guessing with twists, turns and a few spectral shivers. The dialogue is punchy noir, the characters rich, and Koryta captures the steamy heat of the backwaters of the Florida panhandle perfectly. The hurricane, the haunted hotel, Koryta puts those clichés on their ears casting a gritty, ghostly gumshoe that pulled me right out of my reading doldrums and kept me awake into the wee hours of Christmas Eve, finishing this one right to the back cover.
I’m an absolute sucker for books that � in my arrogance -- I’m pretty sure I have figured out, only to have a smarter author turn the tables completely. And while Koryta can certainly keep you guessing, he also delivers the punchline, tightly tying up the who, what, where, when and how of the mystery, finishing things off with an immensely satisfying conclusion.
Final judgement: I loved this one. A supernatural detective story with just the right amount of grit, a paranormal connection that absolutely made sense, and tons and tons of atmosphere -- I can almost see the Cyprus House looking gloomily over the Gulf waves, the buzz of cicadas trilling from the nearby swamps. Maybe I just needed something new, but The Cypress House was one of the best reading surprises of the year. ...more
I’m a little dream-self short and stout. I’m the other half of Bruce � when he lets me out. When I get all steamed up, I don’t pout. I push Bruce aside, I’m a little dream-self short and stout. I’m the other half of Bruce � when he lets me out. When I get all steamed up, I don’t pout. I push Bruce aside, then I’m free to run about!
With American Anthrax, Jeanne Guillemin examines the deadliest biological attack in U.S. history as a virulent strain of the Anthrax virus was seeded into letters mailed to major media outlets and U.S. government offices. The investigative portions of this book are riveting, and Guillemin plays master detective tracing the trail of the tainted correspondence alongside federal investigators and providing an introductory tour of the world of bio-hazards � from disease control to public health, to bio-labs, and bio-security. Although no one was ever convicted of the crimes, Guillemin offers a pretty convincing ‘case-closed� argument against the likeliest perpetrator � mentally-troubled, military anthrax expert Bruce Ivins � and chapter 12 will send shivers up your spine as she peers into Irvins� bizarre behaviors.
This is a good one for all my friends in emergency management � a primer on disease detection and a warning of how far contamination can spread in a biological attack. For the casual reader, I would give the warning that the complexity of the anthrax attacks triggered an extra-heaping portion of ‘alphabet-government-soup� � first responders ranging from the CDC to DHS, to FBI and USPS. Guillemin does a good job keeping things untangled for the most part; oddly, the densest � and by dense I mean dull � parts of the book are the prologue and conclusion, and a tedious detour into the government’s case for bio-weapons in Iraq in chapter 10 � honestly, unless you are a diehard reader (like me), you can probably skim or skip these sections � and get back to the hunt for the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks which is far more compelling.
P.S. Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this book -- for me at least since I also happen to work for a major charitable disaster responder � was than Ivins was a loyal disaster volunteer. That connection actually allowed him to be present as the FBI sought evidence against another suspect. As FBI divers dredged a lake, ‘Bruce Ivins observed the dredging. A committed Red Cross volunteer, he answered a request to help with a food canteen for the FBI and the muddied divers. While the evidence search went on, Ivins dutifully served coffee � until an agent recognized him and, to Ivins� chagrin, asked for his removal� (pp. 160-161). That a bad guy might try infiltrate one of our country's voluntary agencies to try to get close to our first responders is one of my personal nightmares. ...more
The Last Day is superb history of the All Saints Day earthquake of 1755 that destroyed the Portuguese Should be ‘Book One� on your disaster bookshelf!
The Last Day is superb history of the All Saints Day earthquake of 1755 that destroyed the Portuguese capital of Lisbon and caused widespread damage as far away as North Africa. The powerful earthquake, which shook much of Lisbon’s buildings to ground, was quickly followed by a voracious firestorm that consumed the collapsed structures, killing many of those pinned within the rubble. Tragically, the earthquake also triggered a series of tsunami that drowned a good deal more of the quake’s initial survivors, who had sought shelter by the city’s waterfront to avoid the advancing fires. The level of catastrophe is hard to imagine, and author Nicholas Shrady paints a vivid portrait of the disaster and its awful aftermath.
For the professional emergency manager, The Last Day should be required reading; it is, in many ways, a ‘year zero� event for both seismology and the modern disaster response movement. Much as America would see the destruction of New Orleans as inconceivable before Hurricane Katrina, for Europeans steeped in the Age of Enlightenment the idea that Mother Nature could lay waste to a modern European capital was an impossibility. The destruction shocked the assembled states and rewrote the priorities of the Portuguese government. Fortunately for the king of Portugal, he had Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Melo to play the role of the quintessential Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator (to use FEMA’s modern appellation for Carvalho’s responsibilities) and Carvalho grapples with many of the same issues that challenge the modern emergency manager: donated goods and relief supply distribution, issues of temporary housing, long-term recovery planning, and squabbles over property rights during reconstruction.
After the quake, the Portuguese king laments, “What is to be done?� To which Carvalho pragmatically responds, “Bury the dead and feed the living.� Modern progress may allow us to add “Rescue survivors, bury the dead, and feed the living� to Carvalho’s response, but we are not so far advanced from Carvalho’s advice. Similarly, the modern disaster research field has been much focused on the notion that catastrophic disasters may become ‘focusing events,� opening a window for radical changes in public policy. Perhaps no one grasped this notion of ‘a narrow window of opportunity� more than Carvalho, who long before the research, used the Lisbon earthquake as a detonator for sweeping economic, social and political reform.
Again, Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinators (FDRC) take note, this is a pretty good primer for the job (and also a bit of warning to what often happens to FDRCs who go, perhaps, a bit too far out on a limb).
Finally, I will add that while the Lisbon earthquake certainly serves as the fulcrum of The Last Day, Shrady also offers a pretty concise history of Portugal. Usually, digressions don’t appeal to me, but Shrady is the exception. Concise, engaging, and full of historical nuggets, Shrady’s compact history of the nation enriches, rather than detracts from the text, putting the Lisbon earthquake into the wider context of the story of Portugal, tracing the aftershocks of the upheaval through the social, political and economic fabric of the country.
One day a college is going to hire me (seriously � somebody? Anybody?) and I’m going to get to teach my dream course, Historical Disasters: Lessons From The Past For The Modern Emergency Manager, and I’ll use all the great disaster books I’ve read as my text. I think Nicholas Shrady’s The Last Day is where I’d like to start. ...more
Riveting, horrifying, heart-breaking � and ultimately amazing � Gary M. Pomerantz’s Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds tells the real-life story of every ai Riveting, horrifying, heart-breaking � and ultimately amazing � Gary M. Pomerantz’s Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds tells the real-life story of every air traveler's worst nightmare.
In August 1995, Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) Flight 529 was in route from Atlanta, GA to Gulfport, MS with twenty-nine passengers and crew aboard. High in the clouds, one of the commuter plane’s propeller blades snapped, destroying the airplane’s left engine and severely compromising the left wing. Nine minutes and twenty seconds later, after a heroic but ultimately futile battle to keep the wounded plane aloft, the Embraer EMB-120 plummeted into a west Georgia hayfield, the fuselage tearing in two as the aircraft skidded across the dirt and ignited its spilled fuel.
Pomerantz tells the story of this terrible tragedy with astounding energy and meticulous detail, offering a moving, well researched account into the events that led up to the crash, the incident itself, and the aftermath. From the moment the propeller snaps, his prose is taunt � as gripping as any thriller � as the author counts down the flight’s final minutes and seconds with such power and agonizing detail that you can almost feel yourself sitting in that fuselage, the uncomfortable, strained drone of the plane’s remaining engine fighting for the sky, the cold, clammy feel of fear within the cabin, the bark of the flight attendant’s emergency instructions, like words from a bad dream in your head. It’s as close to an actual mid-emergency as I ever want to get, and Pomerantz’s unflinching gaze does not blink until well after the final rescue trucks have left the disaster scene.
The tension, the trauma, Pomerantz’s uncanny ability to describe an event � the final moments of a doomed aircraft -- that seem almost (maybe mercifully?) unknowable would have easily earned this book five stars, but what is more remarkable is that Pomerantz balances the rawness of the accident with a compassion for the people involved that, just as unflinchingly, bleeds through the pages. From the heroic crew, to the passengers, their families, the crash investigators, down to a simple man who worked in the factory that handled that critical, failed component, Pomerantz reconstructs their lives � their struggles, triumphs, tragedies, and recriminations -- with same level of detail that he uses to describe the events of the accident. It is just as raw, just as unblinking, but with an elegance and sensitivity that makes your heart ache for their suffering.
This is simply one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
P.S. The crash of ASA Flight 529 occurred just as I was entering the emergency management profession in a place not far from where I live. Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds is a book that I would recommend to any of my colleagues in the profession � not just for the power of the story and the skill with which it is told � but also because of the many disaster response and recovery elements it addresses. From the impact of spontaneous, civilian first responders to crisis events to the pain of survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress, these are issues with which anyone in emergency management must grapple. Likewise, there are plenty of dreadful stories about how the families of the victims of mass transportation accidents were treated prior to the protections offered under the landmark 1996 Aviation Disaster Assistance Act, a law which continues to guide emergency management response to mass transportation accidents to this day.
Additionally, since I happen to work for a faith-based disaster response organization, I would also suggest Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds as an important case study for professional emotional and spiritual care providers. Not to get too deeply into this (and without generalizing because religion is not a balm for everyone), the spiritual needs (and desire) for faith-based support services was astonishingly significant after this incident, not just among the crash’s survivors and the families of its victims, but all those associated with the event. Just as importantly, there is certainly some cautionary evidence to be taken from this book about the potential risks of vicarious trauma to the caregiver and its long-term negative effects. ...more
Be prepared � when the maelstorm hits � this book becomes impossible to put down!
America’s weatherman Al Roker tackles the great Galveston hurricane o Be prepared � when the maelstorm hits � this book becomes impossible to put down!
America’s weatherman Al Roker tackles the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 in The Storm of the Century delivering a page-turning account of the deadliest tropical cyclone ever to hit the United States. The book is compelling history � mixed with a nice seasoning of some the fundamentals of meteorological science � but the heart of this tale is Roker’s focus on a handful of survivors of the storm and the rescuers who subsequently came to the city’s aid. The book certainly hits its stride just as the storm bears down on Galveston, where Roker’s writing style � short, simple segments shifting rapidly from person-to-person � help convey not only the magnitude of the emergency, but the tension, drama, and desperation of those struggling to survive as Galveston slips beneath the waves. Part two of the book is simply impossible to put down!
The aftermath of the storm is just as engaging � from the grisly task of body removal to the intrepid journey of reporter Winifred Black into the devastated city � Roker offers important insight into the city’s recovery. As an emergency manager, I found the parallels between Galveston and more modern disasters canny. For example, in 1900, city fathers sought to limit media coverage of the destruction, hoping to hide the severity of situation, but it was that selfsame sensationalistic reporting that spurred relief efforts (and more importantly donations) that were critical to the city's reconstruction. This symbiosis between media coverage and charitable fundraising continues today. Galveston’s radical mitigation plan � raising every building in the city on jacks and then backfilling beneath these homes and businesses with sand to literally lift the entire island higher above the ocean -- is evocative of home elevation efforts taken in Mississippi and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Of course, it’s always hard to rate a book like this without drawing a comparison to other works on the same subject � in this case Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm -- which I still consider damn near the best disaster book ever written! But to Roker’s credit, he ably carves out his own ground, tells his own version of this story, and plumbs parts of the tale that receive only a little bit of attention in other works. And, while I still give Larsen’s book the edge, Roker’s The Storm of the Century is just as worthy an addition to your disaster bookshelf.
P.S. For my fellow non-profit disaster workers, Roker spends a good deal of time with American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, who at 78 years old, took to the field one last time to help coordinate relief efforts. My own agency, The Salvation Army, marks Galveston as its first major disaster relief effort, when our National Commander, ordered Salvationists from across the country to the stricken city to provide whatever practical aid and comfort was needed. We do at least get a mention :) ...more
The quintessential souvenir of any visit to the Grand Canyon and one of the very best books on America’s greatest natural wonder.
Confession: a buddy o The quintessential souvenir of any visit to the Grand Canyon and one of the very best books on America’s greatest natural wonder.
Confession: a buddy of mine almost fell off the edge of Grand Canyon. We were descending Angel Bright trail along with a crowd of other tourists; the trail being very, very muddy with melting snow. As the four of us tried to dodge the mire, one of us (rather smartly or so we thought) took to walking on the rocks lining the right edge of the path to keep his boots clean -- little realizing that the melting rivulets of snow had undermined the rocks. I heard a shout, and I remember looking back to see about three quarters of his body hanging over empty space as one of the rocks gave way. Fortunately, one of his knees hit the trail’s edge and, on hands and one knee, he was able to frantically scramble back onto the trail. Luck and reflexes may have kept my friend from being one more entry in the next edition of this book.
And like jerks, we �- his so-called friends -- we laughed so hard our bellies ached. If he had fallen, how would we have gotten home? He had the car keys in his pocket.
I bought Death in Grand Canyon as a memento of that trip; it seemed apropos.
As the title suggests, this is a book about death (and near death) in one of the most dynamic environments on earth. It may seem grim -- very few of these real-life dramas end well -- but authors Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers’s Death in Grand Canyon is quite a bit more than a study in simple morbidity. The Grand Canyon is arguably the most famous natural wonder in all of North America, and the authors evoke the wonderful magnificence of the place throughout the text. But it is also this very grandeur and enormity that makes the Canyon an environment ‘unto itself�. Visit Grand Canyon, and you are very much a stranger in a strange land. It is wonderful, beautiful, and one of the best places on the planet -- but it can also be brutally unforgiving � especially to the unfortunate, the ignorant, or the stupid (see me � above).
This is a pretty thick tome � painstakingly researched � but despite the density of the content and vigorous attention to historical detail and data, Ghiglieri and Myers keep the material eminently readable, buoying the text with amazing stories that are interesting, often heartbreakingly tragic, and frequently, nail-bitingly suspenseful. The story of Glen and Bessie Hyde, for example, is both achingly sad and enticingly mysterious. And, though many of the incidents recounted by the authors are decades (if not more than a century) old, the authors let no dust settle on these dramatic stories of survival. They seem as real and relevant as if they happened only yesterday, and the survival lessons they tell are as applicable to the twenty-first century as the nineteenth.
I also added this one to my 'disaster' library, and folks in that business (like myself) will want to take a special look at Chapters 3 and 5 -- on flash floods and air crashes respectively. Ghiglieri and Myers’s recounting of the Havasu Canyon flash flood and the daredevil heroics of pilot Michael Moore reads like a high tension thriller. Moore flew his small helicopter down the narrow Havasu Canyon fissure just minutes ahead of the raging flood waters, risking his own life to desperately to warn sunbathers and boaters in the canyon of the roaring wall of water headed toward them like a concrete slab. Likewise, the 1956 midair collision of TWA Flight 2 and United Airlines Flight 718 in the skies over Grand Canyon marks a sad milestone in both aviation and disaster management history. The crash was the worst civil air disaster in history (prior to 1960) and provided the impetus for the formation of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), tighter management of the nation’s airspace, and many of our nation’s modern air incident response practices.
I may have bought this book as a souvenir of an incident that reminded my friends and I perhaps a bit too much of our own fragility and mortality, but even if you are not lucky enough to be admiring the view from Grand Canyon Village, Death in Grand Canyon is still well worth grabbing whether your interest is the outdoors, disaster operations, or history in general. It is chock full of information about one of the most amazing places on earth ... and the people who went there, but did not leave.
And, if you plan to on doing a bit of hiking or camping in the park, then I would say this is pretty much essential reading. ...more
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