Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America

By Ted Steinberg

Book Overview

Incredibly, the ten most costly catastrophes in U.S. history have all been natural disasters--seven of them hurricanes--and all have occurred since 1989, a period, ironically, that Congress has dubbed the Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Why this tremendous plague on our houses? While some claim that nature is the problem, in fact, as environmental historian Ted Steinberg explains, historically speaking, much of the death and destruction has been well within the realm of human control. Surveying more than a century of losses from weather and seismic extremes, Steinberg exposes the fallacy of seeing such calamities as simply random events.
Acts of God explores the unnatural history of natural calamity, the decisions of business leaders and government officials that have paved the way for the greater losses of life and property, especially among those least able to withstand such blows--America's poor, elderly, and minorities. Seeing nature or God as the primary culprit, Steinberg argues, has helped to paper over the fact that, in truth, some Americans are better protected from the violence of nature than their counterparts lower down the socioeconomic ladder. How else can we explain that the hardest hit areas have been mobile home parks and other low-income neighborhoods?
Beginning with the 1886 Charleston and 1906 San Francisco earthquakes, and continuing to the present, Steinberg spotlights the defective approach to natural hazards taken by real estate interests, the media, and policymakers. By understating the extent of storm damage in news reports and offering quick repairs and cosmetic solutions to damaged property, fundamental flaws in the status quo go unremedied, class divisions are maintained, and unsafe practices continue unquestioned. Even today, with our increased scientific knowledge, he shows that reckless building continues unabated in seismically active areas and flood-prone coastal plains, often at taxpayer expense.
Sure to provoke discussion, Acts of God is a call to action that must be heard before the next disaster hits.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195142632
• ISBN13: 9780195142631
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 1.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Nature is the What, Culture is the Who--Lovely Analytic Account

I am starting to think about a 2009 book on CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: Faith, Ideology, and the Five Minds (the later from Five Minds for the Future and I am constantly enchanted when I run across a vital reference to how culture is the disaster, not nature. This book is a magnificent epistle on the folly of mankind and the duplicity of government, business and the media. The author of totally brilliant as he gently sets forth the myth that we are not responsible for acts of God when in fact we are the perpetrators of complex human, social, economic, and political fabrications and decisions that invariably: 1. Screw over the poor and those of color 2. Amortize high risks taken by the rich across the entire taxpayer base 3. Conceal, lie, deceive as to the actual premediated decisions that occasioned the disaster turning into a catastrophe. I am reminded of that excellent work, Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series). Here is "the" quote from the author, on page xxii: "The official response to natural disaster is profoundly dysfunctional in the sense that it has both contributed to a continuing cycle of death and destruction and also normalized the injustices of class and race." The middle of the book is a detailed but not at all tedious account of California, Florida, and the Mississippi flood plain. In all three cases calamity was treated as a cultural script to execute: 1. A political agenda on the poor 2. Conceal and deceive outsiders to keep investment coming in 3. Further land speculation, with insurance company as well as state government complicity I am reminded of the two books, Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. Our country has lost its moral compass across all of its institutions. This is not new, the price is simply higher now. The account of how a railroad magnate built a railway from Jacksonville to Miami (which was 200 feet of sand at first) and then on to Key West, with the taxpayer footing the bill, the state government giving away the land, and the speculation leading inevitably to enormous disaster and death, is riveting. Or at least captivating. He lambasts the federal government for venturing into the political economy of risk, for trying to control weather from the 1950's, and for "writing off" the poor in their mobile homes. Land in hazardous terrain subject to flooding is cheaper, mobile homes are cheaper, the poor cannot afford to evacuate, this strikes me as something only a genocidal maniac would love: "natural eugenics," only a little connivance needed. The author tells us that through the 1970's the federal government stunk at both forecasting and warning, in part because of poor budgeting for the National Weather Service, in part because of privatization, in part because of ineptness (e.g. not repairing critical buoys). He states, and

Where The Real Blame Falls

Have "natural disasters" become more destructive ... or has economic development caused this alleged paradigm? Ted Steinberg investigates and confirms what private developers don't want you to hear. As the population grows and moves to more hazard-prone locales (ocean-front properties in Florida and along California's fault lines), humans are creating a supply-and-demand environment with major catastrophes looming on the horizon. Steinburg digs deep into the annuls of American history to expose how hazard vulnerablility began and continues to this very day. While this book was written pre-Katrina, it eerily foreshadows the 2005 hurricane season and precisely predicted the magnitude of destruction that Katrina leveled on the city of New Orleans. While this book is heavy on history and research, it is readable even to the average citizen interested in finding out how we put ourselves in danger. Steinburg washes away political-correctness and tells it like it should be in the many topics he covers (impoverished minorities, weather control, and problems between local, state, and federal governments). This eye-opening book is a must-read for anyone involved in disaster management or concerned about the current state of disaster in the U.S.

from the city of burning rivers

This is a brilliant book -- well-researched, incisive, and passionate. It should inspire all of us to think more deeply and critically about how social oppression manifests itself in the ecosystem.

Essay on Mismanagement of Disaster

Ted Steinberg's book, Acts of God, is an interesting look at the handling of natural disasters in America. It shows how natural disasters may arrive from nature (as flood, hurricane, earthquake, drought, etc.) but it is the social and cultural context of American that truly turns these phenomena into disasters. This can result from such things lack of warning due to budget cuts, downplaying the effects of the disaster in order to support boosterism, or controlling relief efforts in way that hurts the poor, elderly or minorities. The unusually high proportion of death and loss of property of people in mobile homes is not, in fact,due to random, natural acts or some perverse vendetta against by natural forces against mobile homes but, instead, by purposeful acts by government and capitilists. These arguments are presented forcefully using examples from throughout American history. On occasion, particulary the chapter on weather control, the arguments can become a little muddied. It is, nevertheless, a fairly powerful indictment of the current system that will result in more disasters than it will prevent.