Great Disasters

A Best Book of 2025 from Chicago Review of Books For fans of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Great Disasters is a stirring debut novel about six young men coming of age, and the enduring friendships that make us who we are—even as our paths diverge. This is...

In this the first comprehensive treatment of Pearl Harbor since the early 1990s, respected Pacific War naval historian Mark Stille traces the road to war and the Japanese attack itself. He examines the role of the man behind the operation, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the plan. The American preparations for an attack are also carefully reviewed. The heart of the book is a comprehensive narrative of Pearl Harbor along with an appreciation of its results placed in proper perspective.

Nineteen-year-old Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at an acting school in San Francisco. Wiseau's scenes were rivetingly wrong, yet Sestero, hypnotized by such uninhibited acting, thought, "I have to do a scene with this guy." That impulse changed both of their lives. The Disaster Artist is Greg Sestero's laugh-out-loud funny account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and friendship to make "the Citizen Kane of bad movies" ( Entertainment Weekly), which is now an international phenomenon.

Giant earthquakes and tsunamis devastate western Oregon every 300 to 600 years. The last one hit in 1700, so we're due anytime. This informative, entertaining book tells the stories of Oregon's past floods, fires, and eruptions - including the Vanport Flood, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and the Columbus Day Windstorm. Then it investigates the cycles behind our natural disasters and takes a look at what may happen when the next "Big One" strikes.

Narrated by the author: Experience the Southern California wildfires through Jacob Soboroff’s eyes—and voice. New York Times Bestseller and #1 Los Angeles Times Bestseller A "gripping, unshakeable firsthand account" (San Francisco Chronicle) of the firestorm that consumed Los Angeles, from...

A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce “Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page…Captures the majesty and...

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award. An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the Great Mississippi...

HYPOXIA CITY London has turned into a vast charnel house. The ozone layer has been torn apart, and the city's nine million citizens have perished, suffocated as the oxygen vanished. The streets are carpeted with the dead, they lie in heaps in the Royal Parks, while the Underground network has become a subterranean maze of poisonous gas. Hardly anyone escapes the apocalyptic nightmare. There is no help from outside because the entire world shares the same fate. Planet Earth has finally reached its carrying capacity and is collapsing like a convulsing corpse. 99% of people, gasping and ...

A Mystery Book set in the United States around the Great Lakes region and Chicago during the early 20th century. Embark on an unforgettable journey through the treacherous waters of the Great Lakes and the bustling streets of early 20th century Chicago in a tale where maritime trade, personal identities, and the mysteries of human connections are intricately woven together. The book begins with a legend of an Indian drum that beats to signal shipwrecks on the northern end of Lake Michigan. In 1895, the steel freighter Crayford mysteriously vanishes, making its disappearance an enduring myth...

The story of the world's largest, longest, and best-financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told. The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue.

Every disaster has seven warning signs. Learn to spot them before it's too late. From the sinking of the Titanic to the Challenger explosion, from Pearl Harbor to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—disasters don't just happen. They build, step by catastrophic step. Former Green Beret and NY Times bestselling author Bob Mayer reveals the shocking truth: No disaster involving humans happens in isolation. Every tragedy requires a minimum of seven things to go wrong, and human error is always among them. That means disasters can be predicted, prevented, and survived—if you know what to look ...

What do Trojan Horses, exploding blimps, and molasses tsunamis have in common? They’re all epic disasters that history tried to warn us about—yet somehow, we keep hitting “repeat.” In History’s Greatest Blunders: The Epic Fails We Can’t Stop Repeating, D.C. Smith turns up the volume on the past’s biggest screw-ups—from military missteps and tech crashes to ecological chaos and brilliant ideas gone hilariously wrong. Told with razor-sharp wit and unexpected insight, this isn’t your high school history class. It’s a fast-paced, laugh-out-loud journey through the failures ...

One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019! A New York Times Best Book of the Year A Time Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that...

In a world where the threat of nuclear disaster looms larger each day, preparedness is more crucial than ever. The "Nuclear War Survival Manual" offers a meticulous, step-by-step approach to surviving and thriving in the aftermath of nuclear fallout, attacks, and the devastating effects of electromagnetic pulses (EMPs). This comprehensive pocket guide for 2024 is not just a book—it's a lifeline. It draws on real-life survival stories, blending practical advice with tactical strategies to equip you with the knowledge needed to ensure safety and security in the face of the unthinkable. From...

NUCLEAR DISASTER :: CHERNOBYL :: EXPLAINED FACTS :: WITH IMAGES :: UKRAINE :: USSR Do you really know what happened in Chernobyl? The clock read 01:23:40 in Chernobyl. But what really happened at Reactor 4 at that moment? Did the nuclear disaster end in 1986—or did it only just begin? What has humanity learned from the Chernobyl accident? Much has been said about the nuclear disaster that shook the world in 1986, but what you’ll find in this book is even more intriguing. "20 Facts You Didn't Know About Chernobyl" goes beyond the versions you learned at school or saw in TV series. The ...

An estimated 36 million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early '60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as "the three years of natural disaster". As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent 20 years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father.

The astonishing story of immigrants lured to the United States from India and trapped in forced labor—an "eye-opening" "must-read" told by the visionary labor leader who engineered their escape and set them on a path to citizenship (The New York Times Book Review). ​ In late 2006, Saket Soni...

In this gripping narrative history, Al Roker from NBC’s Today and the Weather Channel vividly examines the deadliest natural disaster in American history—a haunting and inspiring tale of tragedy, heroism, and resilience that is full of lessons for today’s new age of extreme weather. On the...

Nick Wallis, an acclaimed freelance journalist and broadcaster, has been following the story since 2010 when he met a taxi driver who told him his pregnant wife had been sent to prison for a crime she did not commit. Since then, he has recorded interviews with dozens of victims, insiders and experts, uncovering hundreds of documents to build up an unparalleled understanding of the story. Using these sources, he has been instrumental in bringing the scandal into the public eye.

What if I told you that the largest radioactive accident happened in Brazil, not in Chernobyl? In Cesium 137, a summary of the real nightmare in Goiânia, the reader will find the report of the biggest accident with a radioactive source ever to occur in the world. Many readers and students know about the nuclear accident that occurred in Chernobyl, but they may not know that, a year later, in 1987, in the city of Goiânia, in Brazil, an accident as shocking as that in Chernobyl occurred. In this book, the author, Leandro Luiz, who is a physicist, explains in a clear and summarized way about...