American Disasters Book

	Introduction: On the Titanic Research and Recovery Expedition and the Production of Disasters	1
1	Capital
1	"A Tempestuous Spirit Called Hurri Cano": Hurricanes and Colonial Society in the British Greater Caribbean	11
2	"The Hungry Year": 1789 on the Northern Border of Revolutionary America	39
3	What Comes Down Must Go Up: Why Disasters Have Been Good for American Capitalism	72
4	Smoke and Mirrors: The San Francisco Earthquake and Seismic Denial	103
II	Faith
5	Faith and Doubt: The Imaginative Dimensions of the Great Chicago Fire	129
6	Distant Disasters, Local Fears: Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Revolution, and Passion in The Atlantic Monthly, 1880-84	170
7	"Nothing Ends Here": Managing the Challenger Disaster	197
III	Community
8	"It Must Be Made Safe": Galveston, Texas, and the 1900 Storm	223
9	Chicago on the Brink: Media Trauma and the 1977 L-Train Crash	247
10	The Day the Water Died: The Exxon Valdez Disaster and Indigenous Culture	277
IV	Possibility
11	"Unknown and Unsung": Feminist, African American, and Radical Responses to the Titanic Disaster	305
12	"Piecing Together What History Has Broken to Bits": Air Florida Flight 90 and the PATCO Disaster	339
13	The Exxon Valdez and Alaska in the American Imagination	382
	Contributors	403
	Permissions	407
	Index	409