Inventing Disaster: the Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood by Cynthia A. Kierner presents a complex and fascinating argument about the evolution of the concept of “the culture of disaster in the premodern world and how over time ideas about the causes, consequences, and meaning of famines, fires, hurricanes, floods, epidemics, and other catastrophic events changed profoundly and became recognizably modern” (xii). The author has compiled a selection of tragic events in American history, provides meticulous detail about many different types of catastrophes beginning with the starving time and shocking Indian attacks at the Jamestown colony, and culminates with the horror of the Johnstown flood in 1889. Her focus also includes shipwrecks, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and fires. Throughout the book Kierner attempts to connect these disparate events by analyzing and illustrating the changing attitudes and responses to disasters over time. Her argument that the public...

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