For your interpretive essay, I'd like you to read one of the following books. These are all either fiction or light non-fiction and are meant to add human interest and drama to the study of natural hazards. If you find other books on the general theme of disaster and would like me to consider it, let me know, and I may add it to the list.

• Hughes, Richard. 1998. In Hazard (a freighter caught in a Caribbean hurricane).
• Lewis, John S. 1997. Rain of Iron and Ice: The Very Real Threat of Comet and Asteroid Bombardment.
• Verschuur, Gerrit L. 1997. Impact! The Threat of Comets and Asteroids.
• McClung, David, and Schaerer, Peter. 1993. The Avalanche Handbook.
• Barry, John M. 1997. Rising Tide : The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.
• Erikson, Kai T. 1978. Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood (flood as arguably "natural" disaster in a strip-mined area of West Virginia).
• Fox, William Price. 1992. Lunatic Wind: Surviving the Storm of the Century (Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina).
• Sodders, Betty. 1998. Michigan on Fire.
• Sutherland, Monica. The Damnedest Finest Ruins (San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906).
• Hadfield, Peter. 1995. Sixty Seconds That Will Change the World: The Coming Tokyo Earthquake.
• Alleman, Roy V. 1991. Blizzard 1949 (in the American West).
• Burr, Millard. 1995. Requiem for the Sudan: War, Drought, and Disaster Relief on the Nile.
• Heiden, David. 1992. Dust to Dust: A Doctor's View of Famine in Africa.
• Engle, Eloise. 1966. Earthquake! The Story of Alaska's Good Friday Disaster.
• Yong, Chen. 1988. The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976: An Anatomy of Disaster.
• Shrivastava, Paul. 1992. Bhopal: Anatomy of a Crisis.
• Mazur, Alan. 1998. A Hazardous Inquiry : The Rashomon Effect at Love Canal.
• Porter, Henry F. 1999. Forecast: Disaster -- the Future of El Niño.

I'd like you to write an essay report, roughly 5-7 pages long (typed or word-processed double-spaced). In it, I'd like you briefly to summarize the MAIN points in the narrative and then ruminate on the book's connection with the themes of this class. This report is due Thursday, 1 April.

• Summarize the physical dynamics offered as explanation for the disaster in the book
• Critique the book in terms of the accuracy with which it handles the physical processes involved
• Summarize the social and economic impacts, whether these be impacts on certain individuals (as in fiction or journalistic books) or on various groups of people or industries (as in some journalistic books or more scholarly texts)
• Critique the discussion of social impacts in terms of variations in victims' vulnerability that might have been glossed over
• Draw out any implications the book has concerning social policy for managing the type of disaster on which it focuses
• Your overall impressions and judgments of the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Would you recommend this book to a friend interested in disaster or a good read?

Your writing mechanics will be assessed: They count for about a third of the points on this report. Pay close attention to the organization of your paper, spelling, grammar, correct and varied sentence structure, proper punctuation and capitalization, and avoiding sexist usage. Sexist usage is the use of a gender-specific term to refer to people of both genders (e.g., "man," when you mean "humanity" or "people"; "mankind," when you mean "humankind"; "men," when you mean "people," "he," when you could simply rework your phrasing to the plural, which is, in English, conveniently ungendered). Sexist usage can also occur when you use the third person singular (i.e., "he" or "she") and then make tacit assumptions about the gender of a hypothetical individual on the basis of the most commonly represented gender in a given group (e.g., the doctor, when he...; the nurse, when she...). When in doubt, switch to the plural.

Document maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
Last revised: 03/30/99