A 17-year-old climber tumbles 50 feet to an isolated ledge. . . . A six-year-old boy lies in cardiac arrest. . . . An 87-year-old man is pulled from a car at the bottom of a frozen pond. Here are more exciting true stories from the front lines of medicine by two Emergency Medical Technicians, the authors of Dial 911 and Lights and Siren. View More...
As the Ebola epidemic becomes more frightening--and hits closer to home--people are looking for answers. How does it spread? Are we at risk? How do we protect ourselves and our families from this deadly disease? In this necessary new book, Dr. Joseph Alton, an MD who is at the forefront of crisis medicine, explains the virus, how it spreads, how to prevent infection, and what the right treatment protocol is if the virus is contracted. He explains in easy-to-understand language the latest research on how Ebola is transmitted and treated, including late-breaking research from the University of M... View More...
Earthquakes, floods, drought, and other natural hazards cause tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of injuries, and billions of dollars in economic losses each year around the world. Many billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance, emergency loans, and development aid are expended annually. Yet efforts to reduce the risks of natural hazards remain largely uncoordinated across different hazard types and do not necessarily focus on areas at highest risk of disaster. 'Natural Disaster Hotspots' presents a global view of major natural disaster risk hotspots--areas at relatively h... View More...
In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.First came the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States -- 150-mile-per-hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces.Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, cr... View More...
Shackleton. Scott. Amundsen. The great twentieth-century polar explorers. But others, too, were engaged in scrambles to the poles. One of the most bizarre and tragic took place in 1928.Against the backdrop of Mussolini's rising power, one of Italy's premier aeronautical engineers, Umberto Nobile, gained acclaim by crossing the North Pole in a dirigible. With this success under his belt, Nobile decided in 1928 to raise the ante and take his newly designed airship to the North Pole, land it and then return to base. But what started in glory turned into a tale of disaster when the airship crashed... View More...
"Surviving is a true blessing that few get to experience." Being strapped in the seat of a plane as it plunges into a nosedive midair is everyone's worst nightmare. Bracing for Impact's compilers and contributors know. They have both lived out that fear and survived, albeit badly hurt, in their own plane crashes. In this collection of true-life survivor tales, people from all walks of life--a freelance writer, a crew member of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band, a naval flight surgeon, a teenager, and a newlywed on her honeymoon, among others--recount their traumatic narrow escapes as engines stalled, fu... View More...
By the world-renowned seismologist, a riveting history of natural disasters, their impact on our culture, and new ways of thinking about the ones to come Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes--they stem from the same forces that give our planet life. Earthquakes give us natural springs; volcanoes produce fertile soil. It is only when these forces exceed our ability to withstand them that they become disasters. Together they have shaped our cities and their architecture; elevated leaders and toppled governments; influenced the way we think, feel, fight, unite, and pray. The histo... View More...
Few writers have been to so many desperate corners of the globe as has Sebastian Junger; fewer still have provided such starkly memorable evocations of characters and events. From the murderous mechanics of the diamond trade in Sierra Leone to the logic of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and the forensics of genocide in Kosovo, this new collection of Junger's nonfiction will take you places you wouldn't dream of going to on your own. View More...
A riveting collection of literary journalism by the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, capped off brilliantly by a new Afterword and a timely essay about war-torn Afghanistan -- a superb eyewitness report about the Taliban's defeat in Kabul -- new to book form.Sebastian Junger has made a specialty of bringing to life the drama of nature and human nature. Few writers have been to so many disparate and desperate corners of the globe. Fewer still have met the standard of great journalism more consistently. None has provided more starkly memorable evocations of extreme events. From the murd... View More...
For the first time, the horrifying story of the world's most tragic and terrifying castastrophe--at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. In a book that matches the scope of his Day of the Bomb, Kurzman tells the Bhopal story--the background, the hour-by-hour difficult decisions, and the bitter aftermath. Illustrated. View More...
On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy. Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992. "A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's searc... View More...
The thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster--and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together "A powerful, heart-wrenching book, as much art as it is journalism."--The Wall Street Journal "A beautifully wrought and profoundly joyful story of compassion and perseverance."--BuzzFeed (Best Books of the Year) In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis--the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful eart... View More...
The wildfires of the summer of 1910 scorched millions of acres in the western states, depositing soot as far away as Greenland. Through the experiences and words of rangers, soldiers, politicians, scientists, and the volunteers who fought the fires and were forever scarred by them, acclaimed historian and former forest fire fighter Stephen Pyne tells the story of that catastrophic year and its indelible legacy on the firefighting policies of today. Not only does Pyne explain how wildfires happen and how they are fought, he also chronicles the ongoing debate on the relative merits of firefighti... View More...
On 27 April 1865, the side-wheel steamboat Sultana's boilers exploded and more than 1,700 people died -- the worst marine disaster in U.S. history. Most of the victims in the heavily overcrowded boat were recently released Union prisoners-of-war. This book looks at the tragedy through the eyes of the victims that survived and their rescuers. View More...
Ebola. Even the name of the virus conjures up mental images of a gruesome, agonizing, bloody death. Anyone who has scanned the news headlines lately has, at the very least, an inkling that a horrible disease is on the loose. It's anyone's best guess how soon this becomes a pandemic on American soil. While the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have both expressed serious concerns that we are on the brink of disaster, border enforcement agencies seem blithely unconcerned. It's really up to you to protect your family. This is a collection of some of the best information... View More...
Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Antonio BanderasIncludes New Material Exclusive to the PaperbackA Finalist for a National Book Critics Circle AwardA Finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book PrizeA New York Times Book Review Notable BookWhen the San Jos mine collapsed outside of Copiap , Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. After the disaster, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist H ctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales, and in Deep Down Dark, he brings them to haunting, visceral... View More...
Through a harrowing first-person account of an eruption and its aftermath, SURVIVING GALERAS reveals the fascinating, high-risk realm of volcanology and explores the profound impact volcanoes have had on the earth's landscapes and civilizations. In 1993, Stanley Williams, an eminent volcanologist, was standing on top of a Colombian volcano called Galeras when it erupted, killing six of his colleagues instantly. As Williams tried to escape the blast, he was pelted with white-hot projectiles traveling faster than bullets. Within seconds he was cut down, his skull fractured, his right leg almost ... View More...
