The first biography of Asenath Nicholson, Compassionate Stranger recovers the largely forgotten history of an extraordinary woman. Trained as a schoolteacher,Nicholson was involved in the abolitionist, temperance, and diet reforms of the day before she left New York in 1844 ""to personally investigate the condition of the Irish poor."" She walked alone throughout nearly every county in Ireland and reported on conditions in rural Ireland on the eve of the Great Irish Famine. She published Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger, an account of her travels in 1847. She returned to Ireland in December 1846 to do what she could to relieve famine suffering - first in Dublin and then in the winter of 1847-48 in the west of Ireland where the suffering was greatest. Nicholson's precise, detailed diaries and correspondence reveal haunting insights into the desperation of victims of the Famine and the negligence and greed of those who added to the suffering. Her account of the Great Irish Famine, Annals of the Famine in Ireland in 1847, 1848 and 1849, is both a record of her work and an indictment of official policies toward the poor: land, employment,famine relief. In addition to telling Nicholson's story, from her early life in Vermont and upstate New York to her better-known work in Ireland, Murphy puts Nicholson's own writings and other historical documents in conversation. This not only contextualizes Nicholson's life and work, but it also supplements the impersonal official records with Nicholson's more compassionate and impassioned accounts of the Irish poor.

In this penetrating account of the impacts of risk on everyday life, Gabe Mythen provides a theoretically informed overview of the regulation of crime and security in a globalized world. By explicating the relationships between risk and crime, security and justice, the text applies risk to specific incidents and events, scrutinizing social processes and cultural practices, and illumining some of the central social and political issues of the modern age. Extending across a range of domains - including law, the environment, media and politics - Mythen embarks on a conceptual and critical exploration of risk theory. In doing so, his incisive text presents both a critical evaluation of the efficacy of competing perspectives on risk, and an authoritative appraisal of the place of risk within the social sciences.

Hunger is a daily reality for a billion people. More than six decades after the technological discoveries that led to the Green Revolution aimed at ending world hunger, regular food shortages, malnutrition, and poverty still plague vast swaths of the world. And with increasing food prices, climate change, resource inequality, and an ever-increasing global population, the future holds further challenges.

In One Billion Hungry, Sir Gordon Conway, one of the world's foremost experts on global food needs, explains the many interrelated issues critical to our global food supply from the science of agricultural advances to the politics of food security. He expands the discussion begun in his influential The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century, emphasizing the essential combination of increased food production, environmental stability, and poverty reduction necessary to end endemic hunger on our planet.

Conway addresses a series of urgent questions about global hunger:

How we will feed a growing global population in the face of a wide range of adverse factors, including climate change?

What contributions can the social and natural sciences make in finding solutions?

And how can we engage both government and the private sector to apply these solutions and achieve significant impact in the lives of the poor?

Conway succeeds in sharing his informed optimism about our collective ability to address these fundamental challenges if we use technology paired with sustainable practices and strategic planning.

Beginning with a definition of hunger and how it is calculated, and moving through issues topically both detailed and comprehensive, each chapter focuses on specific challenges and solutions, ranging in scope from the farmer's daily life to the global movement of food, money, and ideas. Drawing on the latest scientific research and the results of projects around the world, Conway addresses the concepts and realities of our global food needs: the legacy of the Green Revolution; the impact of market forces on food availability; the promise and perils of genetically modified foods; agricultural innovation in regard to crops, livestock, pest control, soil, and water; and the need to both adapt to and slow the rate of climate change. One Billion Hungry will be welcomed by all readers seeking a multifaceted understanding of our global food supply, food security, international agricultural development, and sustainability. "

For many decades federal emergency and disaster policy and management has been an important but one of the least publicised and studied aspects of the national policy in the former Soviet Union. This book discusses major disasters which were unknown to anyone except in very limited official circles. Also discussed is the historical and legal development of the emergency management system in the former Soviet Union/current Russia and the impacted populations themselves.

The transformative event known as "Katrina" exposed long-standing social inequalities. While debates rage about race and class relations in New Orleans and the Katrina diaspora, gender remains curiously absent from public discourse and scholarly analysis. This volume draws on original research and firsthand narratives from women in diverse economic, political, ethnic, and geographic contexts to portray pre-Katrina vulnerabilities, gender concerns in post-disaster housing and assistance, and women's collective struggles to recover from this catastrophe.

Katrina was not just a hurricane. The death, destruction, and misery wreaked on New Orleans cannot be blamed on nature's fury alone. This volume of essays locates the root causes of the 2005 disaster squarely in neoliberal restructuring and examines how pro-market reforms are reshaping life, politics, economy, and the built environment in New Orleans.
The authors--a diverse group writing from the disciplines of sociology, political science, education, public policy, and media theory--argue that human agency and public policy choices were more at fault for the devastation and mass suffering experienced along the Gulf Coast than were sheer forces of nature. The harrowing images of flattened homes, citizens stranded on rooftops, patients dying in makeshift hospitals, and dead bodies floating in floodwaters exposed the moral and political contradictions of neoliberalism--the ideological rejection of the planner state and the active promotion of a new order of market rule.
Many of these essays offer critical insights on the saga of postdisaster reconstruction. Challenging triumphal narratives of civic resiliency and universal recovery, the authors bring to the fore pitched battles over labor rights, gender and racial justice, gentrification, the development of city master plans, the demolition of public housing, policing, the privatization of public schools, and roiling tensions between tourism-based economic growth and neighborhood interests. The contributors also expand and deepen more conventional critiques of "disaster capitalism" to consider how the corporate mobilization of philanthropy and public good will are remaking New Orleans in profound and pernicious ways.
Contributors: Barbara L. Allen, Virginia Polytechnic U; John Arena, CUNY College of Staten Island; Adrienne Dixson, Ohio State U; Eric Ishiwata, Colorado State U; Avis Jones-Deweever, National Council of Negro Women; Chad Lavin, Virginia Polytechnic U; Paul Passavant, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Linda Robertson, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Chris Russill, Carleton U; Kanchana Ruwanpura, U of Southampton; Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, Wayne State U; Geoffrey Whitehall, Acadia U.

Heartbreaking stories from survivors along the Texas Gulf Coast Hurricane Harvey was one of the worst American natural disasters in recorded history. It ravaged the Texas Gulf Coast, and left thousands of people homeless in its wake. In Hurricane Harvey's Aftermath, Kevin M. Fitzpatrick and Matthew L. Spialek offer first-hand accounts from survivors themselves, providing a rare, on-the-ground perspective of natural disaster recovery. Drawing on interviews from more than 350 survivors, the authors trace the experiences of individuals and their communities, both rich and poor, urban and rural, white, Latinx, and Black, and how they navigated the long and difficult road to recovery after Hurricane Harvey. From Corpus Christi to Galveston, they paint a vivid, compelling picture of heartache and destruction, as well as resilience and recovery, as survivors slowly begin rebuilding their lives and their communities. An emotionally provocative read, Hurricane Harvey's Aftermath provides insight into how ordinary people experience and persevere through a disaster in an age of environmental vulnerability.

This volume corrects that distortion "the Famine didn't happen in Ulster." Ulster was indeed spared what a local newspaper called "the horrors of Skibereen," but nonetheless, the severity of the famine, particularly in the winter 1846-7, is all too apparent in each of the nine counties. 95 inmates of Lurgan Workhouse died in one week in February 1847; and 351 people queued to get into Enniskillen Workhouse in one day. What was done to limit the tragedy? Contentious issues such as the effectiveness of government relief measures, the response of local landlords, and the role of the churches are all assessed.

This is the definitive, unique account of the disaster in which 96 men, women and children were killed, hundreds injured and thousands traumatised. It details the appalling treatment endured by the bereaved and survivors in the immediate aftermath, the inhumanity of the identification process and the vilification of fans in the national and international media. In 2012, Phil Scraton was primary author of the ground-breaking report published by the Hillsborough Independent Panel following its new research into thousands of documents disclosed by all agencies involved. Against a backdrop of almost three decades of persistent struggle by bereaved families and survivors, in this new edition he reflects on the Panel's in-depth work, its revelatory findings and their unprecedented impact - an unreserved apology from the Prime Minister; new criminal investigations; the Independent Police Complaints Commission's largest-ever inquiry; the quashing of 96 inquest verdicts; a review of all health and pathology policies. Paving the way for truth recovery and institutional accountability in other controversial cases, he details the process and considers the impact of the longest ever inquests, from the preliminary hearings to their comprehensive, devastating verdicts. Powerful, disturbing and harrowing, Hillsborough: The Truth exposes the institutional complacency that led to the unlawful killing of the 96, revealing how the interests of ordinary people are marginalised when those in authority sacrifice truth and accountability to protect their reputations.

Initial priorities for U.S. participation in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, declared by the United Nations, are contained in this volume. It focuses on seven issues: hazard and risk assessment; awareness and education; mitigation; preparedness for emergency response; recovery and reconstruction; prediction and warning; learning from disasters; and U.S. participation internationally.
The committee presents its philosophy of calls for broad public and private participation to reduce the toll of disasters.

An optimistic vision of the future after Covid-19 by a leading professor of globalisation at the University of Oxford.

We are at a crossroads. The wrecking-ball of Covid-19 has destroyed global norms. Many think that after the devastation there will be a bounce back. To Ian Goldin, Professor of Development and Globalisation at the University of Oxford, this is a retrograde notion.

He believes that this crisis can create opportunities for change, just as the Second World War forged the ideas behind the Beveridge Report. Published in 1942, it was revolutionary and laid the foundations for the welfare state alongside a host of other social and economic reforms, changing the world for the better.

Ian Goldin tackles the challenges and opportunities posed by the pandemic, ranging from globalisation to the future of jobs, income inequality and geopolitics, the climate crisis and the modern city. It is a fresh, bold call for an optimistic future and one we all have the power to create.

The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive 'The Event': the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of 'The Mindset', a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making - as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, and the Metaverse. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created - a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies - and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. Instead of changing the people, he argues, we can change the programme.

The first edition of Tsunami!, published in 1988, provided readers with a complete examination of the tsunami phenomenon in Hawai'i. This second edition adds many eye-witness accounts of the tsunamis of 1946 and 1960 and expands its coverage to include major tsunamis in the Mediterranean and off the coasts of Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Fiji, Alaska, California, Newfoundland, and the Caribbean. Dramatic photographs and accounts of experiencing a tsunami firsthand are placed within the framework of the how and why of tsunamis, our scientific understanding of these phenomena, and the current status of the Tsunami Warning System, which is widely used to forecast and measure tsunamis and prepare coastal areas for possible strikes.

In the aftermath of the devastating 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010, there was an outpouring of support and aid from countries around the world. Yet, two years after the quake, seemingly little has changed as the country continues to suffer from widespread poverty, crippled infrastructure, and a cholera epidemic. Acommon Haitian street slang refers to"the big truck," the half-hearted efforts by the "blancs" who arrive to help but wind up bypassing the victims. In The Big Truck That Went By, award-winning author Jonathan Katz ties together the two crises that continue to cripple Haiti: the aftermath of the earthquake and the endemic government corruption. In the course of bearing witness to the most devastating of tragedies in one of the world's most dysfunctional countries, Katz questions why with so much money being poured into the devastated nation it doesn't improve conditions for the people. He takes a hard look at the efforts of aid organizations, Haitian politics and mismanagement, and at the systemic problems of a country that has no reliable infrastructure. From Bill Clinton, Sean Penn,and formerPresident Francois Duval, to ordinary Haitians who are trying to survive amid the rubble, we get an on the ground portrait of what lifeis like in the formerpearl of the Caribbean. And we learn how the United Nations, in an effort to help, actually caused the first cholera epidemic in the country in over a century that killed over 7,500 people. Asking the hard questions about Western aid, this is a vividly told narrative of how the affluent nations can help the less fortunate in a smarter way.

Creating Katrina, Rebuilding Resilience: Lessons from New Orleans on Vulnerability and Resiliency presents a unique, integrative understanding of Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans area, and the progression to disaster vulnerability as well as resilience pathways. The book integrates the understanding of vulnerability and resiliency by examining the relationships among these two concepts and theories. The disaster knowledge of diverse disciplines and professions is brought together in this book, with authors from social work, public health, community organizing, sociology, political science, public administration, psychology, anthropology, geography and the study of religion. The editors offer both expert and an insider perspectives on Katrina because they have lived in New Orleans and experienced Katrina and the recovery. An improved understanding of the recovery and reconstruction phases of disaster is also presented, and these disaster stages have been the least examined in the disaster and emergency management literature.

The Fukushima and Tohoku Disaster: A Review of the Five-Year Reconstruction Efforts covers the outcome of the response, five years later, to the disasters associated with the Great East Japan earthquake on March 11, 2011. The 3.11 disaster, as it is referred to in Japan, was a complex accident, the likes of which humans had never faced before. This book evaluates the actions taken during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident, for which the Japanese government and people were not prepared. The book also provides recommendations for preparing and responding to disasters for those working and living in disaster-prone areas, making it a vital resource for disaster managers and government agencies.

Science and Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia: Potentials and Challenges provides both a local and global perspective on how to implement the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Topics demonstrate the advancement of scientific research as it applies to early warning systems, including identifying risk and the strengthening of infrastructure for different types of hazards. Through different major disasters, it has become evident that there must be a balance between hard and soft technology and physical, process and social solutions. This book demonstrates how this has been successfully implemented in Asia, and how these applications can apply on a global basis.

Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Floods. Wildfires. Earthquakes. Epidemics. Droughts. Landslides. Trillions of dollars in damages. Billions of people affected. Terrorist attacks. Gas explosions. Bridge collapses. Car, train, and plane crashes. These sudden and unexpected events make it feel as if chaos rules the world, but expecting the unexpected can mitigate the damage and loss to you and your loved ones. It pays to be prepared. When catastrophe strikes, no matter how big or small, being ready and knowing how to respond can be the difference between the loss of life and survival.

Urban Planning for Disaster Recovery focuses on disaster recovery from the perspective of urban planning, an underutilized tactic that can significantly reduce disaster risks. The book examines disaster risk reduction (DRR), in particular, the recovery stage of what is widely known as the disaster cycle. The theoretical underpinning of the book derives from a number of sources in urban planning and disaster management literature, and is illustrated by a series of case studies. It consists of five sections, each of which opens with a conceptual framework that is followed by a series of supporting and illustrative cases as practical examples. These examples both complement and critique the theoretical base provided, demonstrating the need to apply the concepts in location-specific ways.