Reviews for Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce

The average rating for Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-19 00:00:00 Michael Reijpert The story of the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave is fascinating enough, but don't expect Eric Klinenberg's book to be a popularly-accessible page-turner. Klinenberg's book was written as a dissertation in sociology, so its methodology and supporting evidence are sound, but it seems to have been revised only minimally (if at all) for a lay audience. The upshot of Klinenberg's analysis of what led to so many deaths in Chicago in July, 1995 is that living alone leads to dying alone, as getting out of sweltering tenement apartments and single-occupancy rooms--the kind of accommodations peopled by the urban poor and elderly--is essential for survival in a heat wave. In order to get out of their rooms and apartments, however, both the poor and elderly need to have welcoming (and cool) places to go, they need to feel safe walking their neighborhood streets and sidewalks, and they need to feel connected with (or at least trusting of) their neighbors and surrounding communities. Klinenberg's book is illustrated with indelible images of the disaster, including photos of emergency workers removing victims in body bags from locked, air-tight apartments: visual proof that its not the heat nor the humidity that kills in a heat wave; it's the social isolation.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-03-18 00:00:00 Shawn Steuer Of course, I have an obligatory heat wave story- I was 9 and spent the worst of it in my dad's North Side apartment without power or AC. We took turns taking cold baths. I was too hot to even read. That's how you know it's bad. Despite the fact that I was there, I never realized what a public health disaster this heat wave (and other previous and subsequent ones) was for Chicago until this book was assigned to me in grad school. A quick survey of Chicagoan friends and family found that not a single one knew of the huge death toll, although they certainly remembered the heat wave. Given the global trends toward creation of larger cities and overall warming climate for many temperate North American cities, this is a very relevant warning.