Natural Disasters
Learn more about the extremes of life on planet Earth with these books about natural disasters.
Angry weather : heat waves, floods, storms, and the new science of climate change
Otto, Friederike, author
2020
"Massive fires, widespread floods, Category 4 hurricanes-shocking weather disasters dominate news headlines every year, but not everyone agrees on what causes them. In this gripping nonfiction book, renowned scientist Friederike Otto provides an answer with attribution science, a revolutionary method for pinpointing the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Angry Weather tells the compelling, day-by-day story of Hurricane Harvey, which caused over a hundred deaths and $125 billion in damage in 2017. As the hurricane unfolds, Otto reveals how attribution science works in real time, and determines that Harvey's terrifying floods were three times more likely to occur due to human-induced climate change. This new ability to determine climate change's role in extreme weather events has the potential to dramatically transform society-for individuals, who can see how climate change affects their loved ones, and corporations and governments, who may see themselves held accountable in the courts. Otto's research laid out in this groundbreaking book will have profound impacts, both today and for the future of humankind." --Amazon.com.
The big ones : how natural disasters have shaped us (and what we can do about them)
Jones, Lucile M., author
2018
Cascadia's fault : the deadly earthquake that will devastate North America
Thompson, Jerry
2011
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a crack in the earth's crust, roughly fifty kilometers offshore, running 1,100 kilometers from northern Vancouver Island to northern California. "Cascadia's Fault" tells the tale of this devastating future earthquake and the tsunamis it will spawn.
A crack in the edge of the world : America and the great California earthquake of 1906
Winchester, Simon.
2005
The author of "Krakatoa" takes an adventurous and informative look at earthquakes, focusing on the devastating San Francisco quake of 1906.
The disaster profiteers : how natural disasters make the rich richer and the poor even poorer
Mutter, John C., author
2015
A furious sky : the five-hundred-year history of America's hurricanes
Dolin, Eric Jay.
2020
"The best-selling author of Leviathan returns with the first major historical account of America's hurricanes, and reveals how they've shaped our nation. From the moment European colonists laid violent claim to this land, hurricanes have had a profound and visceral impact on American history-yet, no one has attempted to write the definitive account of America's entanglement with these meteorological behemoths. Now, historian Eric Jay Dolin presents the five-hundred-year story of American hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus' New World voyages, to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the escalation of hurricane season as a result of global warming. Populating his narrative with unlikely heroes such as Benito Vines, the nineteenth-century Jesuit priest whose revelatory methods for predicting hurricanes saved countless lives, and journalist Dan Rather, whose coverage of a 1961 hurricane would change broadcasting history, Dolin uncovers the often surprising ways we respond to natural crises. A necessary work of environmental and cultural history, A Furious Sky will change the way we understand the storms on the horizon of America's future"-- Provided by publisher.
The great deluge : hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Brinkley, Douglas.
2006
This acclaimed author tells the complete tale of the terrible storm, offering a unique, piercing analysis of the ongoing crisis, its historical roots, and its repercussions for America.
Krakatoa : the day the world exploded: August 27, 1883
Winchester, Simon, 1944-
2003
Winchester examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the world's most dangerous volcano - Krakatoa.
The million death quake : the science of predicting Earth's deadliest natural disaster
Musson, Roger
2012
Ruthless tide : the heroes and villains of the Johnstown flood, America's astonishing Gilded Age disaster
Roker, Al, 1954- author
2018
The wake : the deadly legacy of a Newfoundland tsunami
MacIntyre, Linden, author
2019
On November 18, 1929, a tsunami struck Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula. Giant waves, up to three storeys high, hit the coast at a hundred kilometres per hour, flooding dozens of communities and washing entire houses out to sea. The most destructive earthquake-related event in Newfoundland's history, the disaster killed twenty-eight people and left hundreds more homeless or destitute. It took days for the outside world to find out about the death and damage caused by the tsunami, which forever changed the lives of the inhabitants of the fishing outports along the Burin Peninsula.
Water over the bridge
Boake, Marilyn, author
2014
32.5 centimetres. That’s about half of the total rainfall many Albertan towns see in a year, but, in 2013, the small town of High River recorded it in just two days. The heavens had opened above Alberta in one of the most infamous floods to ever hit Canada, and in High River and across the region, many lives would be changed forever. After mass evacuation, the town was temporarily abandoned, its streets and suburbs lost beneath the murky floodwaters. Author Marilyn Boake was one of the lucky few to survive the flood relatively unscathed, but she was witness to the ruin that beset her friends, her neighbours, and her community. When they finally returned to their homes, the citizens of High River were left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Now, their voices can be heard: in Water Over the Bridge, Boake records in vivid detail the real-life trials and tribulations faced by six High Riverite families facing the flood. Chronicling the days from the first dark cloud to the earliest attempts at recovery, Water Over the Bridge is a generous, human, and ultimately uplifting account of Canada’s most destructive flood.
What stands in a storm : three days in the worst superstorm to hit the south's tornado alley
Cross, Kim (Kimberly Hisako), 1976-
2015
The white cascade : the Great Northern Railway disaster and America's deadliest avalanche
Krist, Gary.
2007
"In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard hit Washington State. High in the Cascade Mountains near the tiny town of Wellington, two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found their railcars buried in rising drifts, parked precariously on the edge of a steep ravine. An army of the Great Northern Railroad's men worked round-the-clock to rescue the trains, but the storm was unrelenting. Suddenly the earth shifted and a colossal avalanche tumbled, sweeping the trains and their sleeping passengers over the steep slope and down the mountainside."--From source other than the Library of Congress
The worst hard time : the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl
Egan, Timothy
2006
The year without summer : 1816 and the volcano that darkened the world and changed history
Klingaman, William K.
2013