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Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire
John N. Maclean · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorNine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans
Dan Baum · 311 pages
The hidden history of a haunted and beloved city told through the intersecting lives of nine remarkable characters After Hurricane Katrina, Dan Baum moved to New Orleans to write about the city's response to the disaster for The New Yorker. He quickly realized that Katrina was not the most interesting thing about New Orleans, not by a long shot. The most interesting question, which struck him as h
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Douglas Brinkley · 716 pages
An account of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it left in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast documents the events and repercussions of the tragedy and its aftermath and the ongoing crisis confronting the region.
What Stands in a Storm: Three Days in the Worst Superstorm to Hit the South's Tornado Alley
Kim Cross · 301 pages
Weaving together heart-wrenching stories with immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling, a gripping account of a weather event in April 2011 that saw a record 358 tornadoes rip through 21 states in three days shows how things that tear our world apart also reveal what holds us together. "Immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling from the middle of the horrific superstorm of April 2011, a
Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938
R.A. Scotti · 296 pages
The massive destruction wreaked by the Hurricane of 1938 dwarfed that of the Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, and the Mississippi floods of 1927, making the storm the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Now, R.A. Scotti tells the story. Hurricane was a foreign word in New England then. People didn't know how to pronounce it. They didn't know what it meant, and whatever it meant,
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Sebastian Junger · 256 pages
It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high --- a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm." When it struck in October 1991, there was a virtually no warning. "She's comin; on, boys, and she's comin' on strong." radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrew Gail off the coast of Nova Scotia, and soon afterward th
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Sheri Fink · 558 pages
Fink provides a landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina-- and a suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal all
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Timothy Egan · 340 pages
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Adam Higginbotham · 538 pages
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
Stephen Puleo · 273 pages
Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window. "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank fille
Zeitoun
Dave Eggers · 352 pages
From Goodreads: The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days followi
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
Amanda Ripley · 304 pages
Nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality--anything we've ever learned, thought, or dreamed o
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
Josh Neufeld · 200 pages
Presents the stories of seven survivors of Hurricane Katrina who tried to evacuate, protect their possessions, and save loved ones before, during, and after the flood.
Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
Eric Klinenberg · 312 pages
A “social autopsy” (Klinenberg’s phrase) of Chicago’s citizens and institutions after the July 1995 heat wave that killed over 700 people.
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
Simon Winchester · 432 pages
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer · 371 pages
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10,1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin the perilous descent from 29,028 feet (roughly the cruising altitude of an Airbus jetliner), twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly to the top, unaware that the sky had b
The Storm of the Century: Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900
Al Roker, William Hogeland
33 Men
Jonathan Franklin · 308 pages
This is the account of the 2010 San Jose mine rescue in Chile, after one of the longest human entrapments in history. With his coveted "rescue pass," journalist Jonathan Franklin, who had lived 15 years in Chile, was permitted access far past the police perimeter. The miners were discovered alive 17 days after the collapse, but it took another 52 days before they were all rescued. For eight weeks,
Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea
Michael Tougias · 247 pages
A true story of catastrophe and survival at sea. One November morning in 1980, two small lobster boats set out for Georges Bank, a bountiful but perilous fishing ground 130 miles off the Massachusetts coast. The forecast was for typical fall weather--but a colossal storm was brewing to the southeast, a maelstrom the National Weather Service did not accurately locate until the boats were already in
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
John M. Barry · 528 pages
In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. Close to a million people - in a nation of 120 million - were forced out of their homes. Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands.
The Johnstown Flood
David McCullough · 302 pages
At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Ca
Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894
Daniel James Brown · 296 pages