Social impact of disasters Books

Book SynopsisWhen your family, neighborhood, city, or area of the country is affected by a natural disaster, it’s normal and necessary to feel grief and the traumatic experience of actually witnessing and surviving the event may be consuming you. This book will help you understand and embrace your difficult thoughts and feelings. It will be a compassionate companion to you as you move through shock and numbness and struggle with ongoing grief symptoms such as fear, guilt, and sadness. Some of the 100 ideas explain the basic principles of grief and mourning and how they apply in the aftermath of a natural disaster, while others offer immediate, here-and-now suggestions of things you can do today to express your grief and live with meaning in each moment.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe world’s first independent black republic, Haiti was forged in the fire of history’s only successful slave revolution. Yet more than two hundred years later, the full promise of that revolution – a free country and a free people – remains unfulfilled. Home for more than a decade to one of the world’s largest UN peacekeeping forces, Haiti's tumultuous political culture – buffeted by coups and armed political partisans – combined with economic inequality and environmental degradation to create immense difficulties even before the devastating 2010 earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. This grim tale, however, is not the whole story. In this moving and detailed history, Michael Deibert, who has spent two decades reporting on Haiti, chronicles the heroic struggles of Haitians to build their longed-for country in the face of overwhelming odds. Based on hundreds of interviews with Haitian political leaders, international diplomats, peasant advocates and gang leaders, as well as ordinary Haitians, Deibert’s book provides a vivid, complex and challenging analysis of Haiti’s recent history.Trade ReviewDeibert brings his journalistic eye and deep affection for Haiti to an unflinching and urgently needed work, documenting the political corruption, culture of impunity and international meddling that have plagued this nation over the past two decades. * Carrie Gibson, author of Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean *Deibert’s exhaustive reportage gets an edge from his righteous anger on behalf of a people with whom he has a deep and abiding connection. An invaluable sourcebook for the period, and also a riveting read. * Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls' Rising: A Novel of Haiti *An engrossing tour through Haiti’s extraordinary history of survival. Its great strength is Deibert’s sharp ear for Haiti’s many voices, for too long muted by a jaundiced media. * Matthew J. Smith, University of the West Indies (Jamaica) *Table of ContentsPrologue: Storm Clouds 1. Istwa (History) 2. Les Blancs Débarquent 3. Operation Baghdad 4. Deceptions and Delusions 5. The Return 6. Give Us Peace or Rest in Peace 7. Uneasy Neighbors 8. Lavi Chè 9. Plots and Revelations 10. Douze Janvier 11. The Republic of NGOs 12. Plague 13. Tèt Kale 14. In the Kingdom of Impunity 15. Open for Business 16. A Disaster Foretold 17. ‘When They Are President, They Will Understand Me’ Epilogue

Read more less

Book SynopsisA New York Times Notable Book “This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.” —Stephen King From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.Trade Review"The best novel I read in 2022 was THE DELUGE, by Stephen Markley... This is what the world is going to look like in the next 10 years, if changes aren't made. More terrifying than THE STAND. Because it's real."—Stephen King, on Twitter "Immersive and ambitious, [The Deluge] shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.”—New York Times Book Review "An astonishing feat of procedural imagination, narrative construction and scientific acumen."—Los Angeles Times "A clear-eyed, climate-justice-minded page-turner. . . . Stephen Markley’s new novel is part thriller, part horror, part all-too-real. It’s scary, instructive and also entertaining."—Washington Post "This book is destined to be a classic and needs to be read by anyone who can get their hands on it.... THE DELUGE is ultimately a feel-good work that will leave readers reeling from the amount of information that has been dissected and shared." —Book Reporter “Markley’s dark depiction of the near future is filled with vivid descriptions of climate catastrophes, but his intricate network of complex characters balances precision with pathos, offering a kaleidoscopic view of humanity’s fraught relationship with its changing planet.”—Scientific American "This is a stunning achievement that may earn a place among dystopian and apocalyptic classics like 1984 and On the Beach. And perhaps most of all, it’s an unflinching and utterly compelling call to action to prevent an all-too-possible future."—Library Journal (starred review) “In this brilliant dystopian epic... [Markley's] nuanced characterizations of individuals with different approaches to the existential threat make the perils they encounter feel real as they navigate cover-ups and lies. It’s a disturbing tour de force.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "An ambitious rendering of a forbidding future and the public and private challenges that will define it."—Kirkus “[A]mbitious, sprawling… a demanding but worthwhile read.”—Booklist "What makes you not want to put it down, is you care about the people in the book" —Seth Meyers “A ferocious, spectacular achievement. A masterful beast of intellect and heart.?Markley should take his place as a visionary of our time.” —Merritt Tierce, author of Love Me Back “A major achievement, bountifully imagined. Unquestionably one of the best novels to grapple with the climate crisis. I am haunted by it.”— Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead “A stunning and comprehensive view of a future that is both impressively imagined and terrifyingly imminent.”—Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of A Place For Us “Engrossing and timely. A towering achievement in style and substance that is at once timeless and impossibly urgent.”—Ben Philippe, author of Charming as a Verb “The Deluge is not just an impressively well-thought-out and all-too-realistic catalog of the ways in which the climate crisis might mutate into something much worse; it's also a page-turner packed with no shortage of thrills or heart.”—Sean Adams, author of The Heap “A masterclass of climate fiction. This barnstormer of a book is a must-read.”—Nana Nkweti, author of Walking on Cowrie Shells “A seminal novel and a singular achievement. The Deluge is sure to take a place alongside such great environmental books as The Overstory, The Shell Collector, Barkskins, Flight Behavior and so many others.”—Bill Cusumano, Square Books, Oxford, Mississippi “An epic work of great ambition, Stephen Markley’s The Deluge is unyielding; it marvels and it mortifies. Few books in a lifetime will make you feel as this one must and while full of every kind of blooming horror, Markley’s magnum opus is as engulfing as it is earnest.”—Jeremy Garber, Powells, Portland Oregon “A terrifyingly imagined future, made all the more believable by the real characters in the not so distant past and present. An important book.”—Bobbi Irving, Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley, Pennsylvania “One of those rare novels that manages to be deeply informative and a page-turner at the same time, The Deluge takes us on an intrigue-laden journey into a possible future that is truthful with regard to both the urgency and agency that exists today in addressing the climate crisis.”—Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor, University of Pennsylvania and author of “The New Climate War”

Read more less