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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Social impact of disasters > General
From award-winning ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman, and written using exclusive interviews and information comes the definitive account of the dramatic story that gripped the world: the miracle rescue of twelve boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave miles underground for nearly three
weeks-a pulse-pounding page-turner by a reporter who was there every step of their journey out.
After a practice in June 2018, a Thai soccer coach took a dozen of his young players to explore a famous but flood-prone cave. It was one of the boys' birthday, but neither he nor the dozen resurfaced. Worried parents and rescuers flocked to the mouth of a cave that seemed to have swallowed the boys without a trace. Ranging in age from eleven to sixteen, the boys were all members of the Wild Boars soccer team. When water unexpectedly inundated the cave, blocking their escape, they retreated deeper inside, taking shelter in a side cavern. While the world feared them dead, the thirteen young souls survived by licking the condensation off the cave's walls, meditating, and huddling together for warmth. In this thrilling account, ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman recounts this amazing story in depth and from every angle, exploring their time in the cave, the failed plans and human mistakes that nearly doomed them, and the daring mission that ultimately saved them.
Gutman introduces the elite team of volunteer divers who risked death to execute a plan so risky that its American planners admitted, "for us, success would have meant getting just one boy out alive." He takes you inside the meetings where life and death decisions were grimly made and describes how these heroes pulled off an improbable rescue under immense pressure, with the boys' desperate parents and the entire world watching. One of the largest rescues in history was in doubt until the very last moment. Matt Gutman covered the story intensively, went deep inside the caves himself, and interviewed dozens of rescuers, experts and eye-witnessed around the world.
The result is this pulse-pounding page-turner that vividly recreates this extraordinary event in all its intensity-and documents the ingenuity and sacrifice it took to succeed.
With wit, humor, and an infectious love of astronomy that could win
over even the science-phobic, this fun and fascinating book reminds
us that outer space is anything but remote. The scientist behind
the popular website badastronomy.com, Philip Plait presents some of
the most fearsome end-of-the-world calamities (for instance,
incoming asteroids and planet-swallowing black holes), demystifies
the scientific principles at work behind them, and gives us the
odds that any of them will step out of the realm of sci-fi to
disrupt our quiet corner of the cosmos. The result is a book that
is both terrifying and entertaining?a tour of the violent universe
we live in, written with an enthusiasm that every stargazer will
appreciate.
Disaster can strike without notice. In a split-second the forces
of nature, human intervention, or a simple twist of fate can place
lives in jeopardy. A ship sinks, a plane crashes, a child wanders
deep into the forest. Death is imminent, except for the bravery and
persistence of small groups of men and women who enter these dark
frontiers as rescuers. They fail sometimes. But often they return
with the near dead, plucking them from the hungry jaws of disaster.
Written by veteran newsman Dean Beeby, "Deadly Frontiers: Disaster
and Rescue on Canada's Atlantic Seaboard" tells the stories of
real-life heroes, and of the bureaucracy and bungling that threaten
their lives and those they have sworn to save.
In "Deadly Frontiers," Dean Beeby deals with the chilling
question of Canada's preparedness for disaster, as he investigates
the most significant events in the contemporary history of search
and rescue. Canada occupies a unique position in the rarified world
of search and rescue. The second-largest country on the planet,
Canada has three jagged coastlines, an immense internal wilderness,
and a vast Arctic to swallow hapless travellers. Since the Second
World War, Canada's East Coast has been the crucible for modern
search-and-rescue techniques and equipment. This hard-won
experience has been driven mostly by disaster, from the 1982
sinking of the Ocean Ranger oil rig off Newfoundland to numerous
cargo-vessel disappearances in the 1990s, including the "Protektor,
Gold Bond Conveyor, Marika," and "Vanessa." Ground search and
rescue, a special branch of this culture, was reborn in 1986 during
the protracted search for a lost child in the forests north of
Halifax. Swissair Flight 111 plunged into waters off Peggy's Cove,
Nova Scotia in 1998, triggering a massive search-and-recovery
effort, as well as a fundamental rethinking of emergency response.
The worst disaster within the search-and-rescue community itself
was the 1998 crash in Quebec of a Labrador helicopter from
Greenwood, Nova Scotia, leaving six rescue specialists dead among
the charred wreckage.
In "Deadly Frontiers," author Dean Beeby examines official
documents, forensic evidence, and the personal histories of those
involved in these cases and more. His book is a frank examination
of how Canada's tragedies and triumphs have helped forge a
professional search-and-rescue culture that is second to none.
What is the role of folklore in the discussion of catastrophe and
trauma? How do disaster survivors use language, ritual, and the
material world to articulate their experiences? What insights and
tools can the field of folkloristics offer survivors for navigating
and narrating disaster and its aftermath? Can folklorists
contribute to broader understandings of empathy and the roles of
listening in ethnographic work? We Are All Survivors is a
collection of essays exploring the role of folklore in the wake of
disaster. Contributors include scholars from the United States and
Japan who have long worked with disaster-stricken communities or
are disaster survivors themselves; individual chapters address
Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and two earthquakes in Japan,
including the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of 2011.
Adapted from a 2017 special issue of Fabula (from the International
Society for Folk Narrative Research), the book includes a revised
introduction, an additional chapter with original illustrations,
and a new conclusion considering how folklorists are documenting
the COVID-19 pandemic. We Are All Survivors bears witness to
survivors' expressions of remembrance, grieving, and healing.
Drawing from many disciplinary areas, this edited volume explores
how the Coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately harmed
vulnerable and marginalized people in the U.S. Chapters address
harm to people of color that exacerbated structural racism and harm
to low-wage workers that highlighted existing inequalities. In
addition, the volume provides strategies that have been successful
in mitigating these harms and recommendations for a postpandemic
more peaceful and just future.
The Impact of Natural Disasters on Systemic Political and Social
Inequities in the U.S. examines how natural disasters impact social
inequality in the United States. The contributors cover topics such
as criminal justice, demographics, economics, history, political
science, and sociology to show how effects of natural disasters
vary by social and economic class in the United States. This volume
studies social and political mechanisms in disaster response and
relief that enable natural disasters to worsen inequalities in
America and offers potential solutions.
The Great East Japan Disaster - a compound catastrophe of
earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that began on March 11,
2011 - has ushered in a new era of cultural production dominated by
discussions on safety and security, risk and vulnerability, and
recovery and refortification. Gender, Culture, and Disaster in
Post-3.11 Japan re-frames post-disaster national reconstruction as
a social project imbued with dynamics of gender, race, and empire
and in doing so Mire Koikari offers an innovative approach to
resilience building in contemporary Japan. From juvenile literature
to civic manuals to policy statements, Koikari examines a vast
array of primary sources to demonstrate how femininity and
masculinity, readiness and preparedness, militarism and
humanitarianism, and nationalism and transnationalism inform
cultural formation and transformation triggered by the
unprecedented crisis. Interdisciplinary in its orientation, the
book reveals how militarism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism
drive Japan's resilience building while calling attention to
historical precedents and transnational connections that animate
the ongoing mobilization toward safety and security. An important
contribution to studies of gender and Japan, the book is essential
reading for all those wishing to understand local and global
politics of precarity and its proposed solutions amid the rising
tide of pandemics, ecological hazards, industrial disasters, and
humanitarian crises.
A spellbinding new talent explores the dark side of creativity
through the stories of thirteen tragic architects 'Bold Ventures
resembles a pop version of Iain Sinclair's psychogeography or Out
of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer's anti-biography of DH Lawrence' Olivia
Laing, Guardian In thirteen chapters, Belgian poet Charlotte Van
den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal for their
architects - architects who either killed themselves or are
rumoured to have done so. They range across time and space from a
church with a twisted spire built in seventeenth-century France to
a theatre that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC.,
and an eerily sinking swimming pool in her hometown of Turnhout.
Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Charles Darwin
to art history, stories from her own life and popular culture,
patterns gradually come into focus, as Van den Broeck asks: what is
that strange life-or-death connection between a creation and its
creator? Threaded through each story, and in prose of great
essayistic subtlety, Van den Broeck meditates on the question of
suicide - what Albert Camus called the 'one truly serious
philosophical problem' - in relation to creativity and public
disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking
new ground in literary non-fiction, as well as providing solace and
consolation - and a note of caution - to anyone who has ever risked
their hand at a creative act. 'What a sensible, intelligent and
beautiful book' Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine
2020 was a year unlike any other in U.S. history. The Future of
Emergency Management After 2020: The New, Normal and Novel
provocatively addresses the significant changes to the emergency
management field. This title discusses the specific changes,
commonalities, and future and persistent challenges for the next
decade. The Future of Emergency Management After 2020: The New,
Normal and Novel will draw attention to a variety of issues and
challenges which will alter the scope, complexity and priorities of
future emergency managers. This title will delineate the
differences between emergency management and public safety.
Additionally, it addresses international challenges that may arise.
Faculty, students, and practitioners of emergency management along
with anyone with a general interest in emergency management will
find this book extremely pertinent and valuable.
Lauren Carruth's Love and Liberation tells a new kind of
humanitarian story. The protagonists are not volunteers from afar
but rather Somali locals caring for each other: nurses, aid
workers, policymakers, drivers, community health workers, and
bureaucrats. The contributions of locals are often taken for
granted, and the competencies, aspirations, and effectiveness of
local staffers frequently remain muted or absent from the planning
and evaluation of humanitarian interventions structured by
outsiders. Relief work is traditionally imagined as politically
neutral and impartial, and interventions are planned as temporary,
extraordinary, and distant. Carruth provides an alternative vision
of what "humanitarian" response means in practice-not driven by
International Humanitarian Law, the missions of Western relief
organizations, or trends in the aid industry or academia but
instead by what Somalis call samafal. Samafal is structured by the
cultivation of lasting relationships of care, interdependence,
kinship, and ethnic solidarity. Samafal is also explicitly
political and potentially emancipatory: humanitarian responses
present opportunities for Somalis to begin to redress histories of
colonial partitions and to make the most out of their political and
economic marginalization. By centering Love and Liberation around
Somalis' understanding and enactments of samafal, Carruth offers a
new perspective on politics and intervention in Africa.
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