Disaster Relief Books

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic Conditions
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic History
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Free Enterprise

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 325 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.

"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq'' civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves… Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the 'War on Terror' to Halliburton and Blackwater… After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts… New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened." Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes "produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today." Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld.

There's little doubt Klein's book--which arrived to enormous attention and fanfare thanks to her previous missive, the best-selling No Logo, will stir the ire of the right and corporate America. It's also true that Klein's assertions are coherent, comprehensively researched and footnoted, and she makes a very credible case. Even if the world isn't going to hell in a hand-basket just yet, it's nice to know a sharp customer like Klein is bearing witness to the backroom machinations of government and industry in times of turmoil. --Kim Hughes

When All Hell Breaks Loose

Cody Lundin

Amazon Price: $13.59 List Price: $19.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Gibbs Smith, Publisher Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $12.35

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

What demographic does this book appeal to? 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Of course, there is some good information that will help a lot, if you put it into practice. But as another reviewer said, there's too much funk.

I don't think this book was written, necessarily for a certain age group or demographic. It seems to have been written for a certain personality, like those that still read old issues of Mad Magazine.

Once again, there's content here that could be helpful. But as for the presentation, "To each his own said the farmer as he kissed the cow."

Everyone should know what is in this book. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Don't be a nitpicking snob. This book should be the foundation of a required class in the 8th grade. Everyone should know at least this much about basic human needs and how to fulfill them during a crisis. But this will never happen because public school teachers think that classes should be dull and boring, and have only little, if any, application to human needs in the real world.

Get and read this book, then lend it to your children. The boys especially will love it. It is both funny and informative.

This book could save the lives of your entire family. It will give your children an appreciation of their presently protected lives while, at the same time, it will provide them with the information they might need should an actual crisis occur. "What to do When all Hell Breaks Loose" beats the hell out of "The Boy Scout Manual."

Editorial Review:

Survival expert Cody Lundin's new book, When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes is what every family needs to prepare and educate themselves about survival psychology and the skills necessary to negotiate a disaster whether you are at home, in the office, or in your car.

Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival

Jack A. Spigarelli

Amazon Price: $19.95 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Cross-Current Pub. Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $19.94

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Disaster Relief

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Packed full of information - a valued addition to any preparedness library 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a very insightful and well constructed book. There is a TON of information. It does lean heavily on food storage, dedicating nearly 2/3 of its 315 pages to various facets of food (production, preservation, storage). The remaining 100+ pages discuss things like clothing/bedding; Heat, cooking and light, Medical/dental; sanitation/personal care; communication, etc.
There are more than 2 dozen checklists which are very comprehensive and detailed. In my opinion these checklists combined with the nearly 20 pages of resources (pp 295-314) and other books recommended (chapter 31 - Survival Library pp 297-304) make the book worth purchasing. However - this great strength can also be a weakness, make sure the copy you buy is current. The first and second printings were back in the 1980's and don't contain updated resource lists ( a lesson I learned when purchasing Making the Best of Basics by James Talmadge Stevens). The older editions, I suspect are equally useful resources but won't have the very best part of the book.

Editorial Review:

A complete guide to emergency preparedness for our uncertain times. Virtually an encyclopedia of food storage and personal preparedness, it covers topics from exactly how to design a food storage program tailored for your particular family to growing and preserving food, storing fuel, alternate energy, emergency evacuation kits, medical and dental, surviving biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism, communications, selection of firearms and other survival tools, and preparing for earthquakes.

Dozens of detailed, expert checklists and tables with photographs and index. Extensive book and resource lists with regular and Internet addresses. An absolute must for those serious about preparing for and surviving during our dangerous times.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

Amanda Ripley

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Applied Psychology
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Personality
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

It lurks in the corner of our imagination, almost beyond our ability to see it: the possibility that a tear in the fabric of life could open up without warning, upending a house, a skyscraper, or a civilization.

Today, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality–anything we’ve ever learned, thought, or dreamed of–ultimately matter?
    
Amanda Ripley, an award-winning journalist for Time magazine who has covered some of the most devastating disasters of our age, set out to discover what lies beyond fear and speculation. In this magnificent work of investigative journalism, Ripley retraces the human response to some of history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to a plane crash in England in 1985 that mystified investigators for years, to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Then, to understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts, formal and informal, from a Holocaust survivor who studies heroism to a master gunfighter who learned to overcome the effects of extreme fear.

Finally, Ripley steps into the dark corners of her own imagination, having her brain examined by military researchers and experiencing through realistic simulations what it might be like to survive a plane crash into the ocean or to escape a raging fire.
    
Ripley comes back with precious wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain’s fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain’s ability to do much, much better, with just a little help.

The Unthinkable escorts us into the bleakest regions of our nightmares, flicks on a flashlight, and takes a steady look around. Then it leads us home, smarter and stronger than we were before.

When Technology Fails (Revised & Expanded): A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency

Matthew Stein

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General AAS
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> How-to & Home Improvements -> Reference

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

There’s never been a better time to “be prepared.” Matthew Stein’s comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills—from food and water to shelter and energy to first-aid and crisis-management skills—prepares you to embark on the path toward sustainability. But unlike any other book, Stein not only shows you how to live “green” in seemingly stable times, but to live in the face of potential disasters, lasting days or years, coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown, or environmental catastrophe.

When Technology Fails covers the gamut. You’ll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you’ve been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You’ll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You’ll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity. Each chapter (a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine, and healing; energy, heat, and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines, and materials) offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad.

Fully revised and expanded—the first edition was written pre-9/11 and pre-Katrina, when few Americans took the risk of social disruption seriously—When Technology Fails ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on "Making the Shift to Sustainability," which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community and global levels.

The Johnstown Flood

David McCullough

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 19th Century -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 19th Century -> Gilded Age
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Mid-Atlantic

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 89 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The history of civil engineering may sound boring, but in David McCullough's hands it is, well, riveting. His award-winning histories of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal were preceded by this account of the disastrous dam failure that drowned Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889. Written while the last survivors of the flood were still alive, McCullough's narrative weaves the stories of the town, the wealthy men who owned the dam, and the forces of nature into a seamless whole. His account is unforgettable: "The wave kept on coming straight toward him, heading for the very heart of the city. Stores, houses, trees, everything was going down in front of it, and the closer it came, the bigger it seemed to grow.... The height of the wall of water was at least thirty-six feet at the center.... The drowning and devastation of the city took just about ten minutes." A powerful, definitive book, and a tribute to the thousands who died in America's worst inland flood. --Mary Ellen Curtin

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Anderson Cooper

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Military -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Military -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 203 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 2005, two tragedies--the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina--turned CNN reporter Anderson Cooper into a media celebrity. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper's memoir of "war, disasters and survival," is a brief but powerful chronicle of Cooper's ascent to stardom and his struggle with his own tragedies and demons. Cooper was 10 years old when his father, Wyatt Cooper, died during heart bypass surgery. He was 20 when his beloved older brother, Carter, committed suicide by jumping off his mother's penthouse balcony (his mother, by the way, being Gloria Vanderbilt). The losses profoundly affected Cooper, who fled home after college to work as a freelance journalist for Channel One, the classroom news service. Covering tragedies in far-flung places like Burma, Vietnam, and Somalia, Cooper quickly learned that "as a journalist, no matter ... how respectful you are, part of your brain remains focused on how to capture the horror you see, how to package it, present it to others." Cooper's description of these horrors, from war-ravaged Baghdad to famine-wracked Niger, is poignant but surprisingly unsentimental. In Niger, Cooper writes, he is chagrined, then resigned, when he catches himself looking for the "worst cases" to commit to film. "They die, I live. It's the way of the world," he writes. In the final section of Dispatches, Cooper describes covering Hurricane Katrina, the story that made him famous. The transcript of his showdown with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (in which Cooper tells Landrieu people in New Orleans are "ashamed of what is happening in this country right now") is worth the price of admission on its own. Cooper's memoir leaves some questions unanswered--there's frustratingly little about his personal life, for example--but remains a vivid, modest self-portrait by a man who is proving himself to be an admirable, courageous leader in a medium that could use more like him. --Erica C. Barnett

Organize for Disaster: Prepare Your Family and Your Home for Any Natural Or Unnatural Disaster

Judith Kolberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent Book But Only Does What Title Says 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

First - this is NOT a complete book on disaster preparedness. It is a book on how to organize your belongings and information in case of disaster - period. In that respect it is excellent. It is an essential part of a disaster preparedness library but you will need other books that cover other topics.

Editorial Review:

The world is a more dangerous place than it used to be. Organize for Disaster: Prepare Your Family and Your Home for Any Natural or Unnatural Disaster engages that danger head-on. It advises preparing for disasters as part of everyday life instead of as an urgent event in the heat of the moment. Organize for Disaster provides organizing tools including shopping lists for purchasing disaster provisions, storage ideas, sample plans for communicating, evacuating and escaping, and checklists. The book recognizes the entire family can be involved in preparedness and includes a What Children Can Do section. Organize for Disaster is current with information about terrorism as well as natural disasters. It is exactly what every busy family needs to be prepared for any disaster.

Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned

Cathy Scott

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Animal Care & Pets -> Essays
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Animal Care & Pets -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Lesson in Humanity and Love .... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I just finished reading this awe inspiring book by Cathy Scott, forward by Ali McGraw, and photography by Clay Myers. I was moved to tears. It is an example of what all of us should aspire to. Having compassion and providing assistance in times of need, random acts of kindness, putting others first, caring for those who cannot care for themselves.

Tragedies always bring out the best in others, and this book is a documentary of the very best in humanity. Thank you a thousand times to all who came to the rescue of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, both animal and human. You are the angels on earth.

This is a must read for anyone who has ever loved an animal. Please visit the Best Friends Animal Society website to learn how you can help.

Editorial Review:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many animals had to fend for themselves because their owners lost them or were unable to care for them. In Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned, Cathy Scott documents her experience working with the Best Friends Animal Society triage center to rescue lost animals and reunite them with their owners. Over two hundred stories with accompanying photos describe dramatic and challenging rescue cases with details about the rescues, the examinations, treatment, and follow-up care by the selfless volunteers who worked to save beloved best friends.

The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival

Marq de Villiers

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Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Earth Sciences -> General
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Earth Sciences -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

What is the fate of the world as we know it?

Tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, pandemics, cosmic radiation, gamma bursts from space, colliding comets, and asteroids—these things used to worry us from time to time, but now they have become the background noise of our culture. Are natural calamities indeed more probable, and more frequent, than they were? Are things getting worse? Are the boundaries between natural and human-caused calamities blurring? Are we part of the problem? If so, what can we do about it?

In The End, award-winning writer Marq de Villiers examines these questions at a time when there is an urgent need to understand the perils that confront us, to act in such a way as best we can for the inevitable disasters when they come.

We can do nothing about some natural calamities, but about others we can do a great deal. De Villiers helps us understand which is which, and lays out some provocative ideas for mitigating the damage all such calamities can inflict on us and our world.

The End is a brilliant and challenging look at what lies ahead, and at what we can do to influence our future.

(20081001)