Why read Acts of God?

Book cover of Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America

Book description

As the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain began to pour into New Orleans, people began asking the big question-could any of this have been avoided? How much of the damage from Hurricane Katrina was bad luck, and how much was poor city planning? Steinberg's Acts of God…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Acts of God as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Cynthia Kierner

Author

Back when people understood hurricanes, earthquakes, and other disasters as literally being "acts of God," they sensibly concluded that human intervention could not prevent them. Yet that language—and its wide-ranging implications for public policy—has persisted, even as scientists have come to understand the physical causes of disasters and, increasingly, to believe that no disaster is wholly "natural." Ted Steinberg shows how government and corporate leaders' perpetuation of the idea of disasters as "natural" or even divinely ordained helps them to evade responsibility and avoid meaningful policy changes that might prevent future catastrophes. (Ripped from the headlines, climate change denial is…

From Cynthia's list on American disasters.