World Disasters

Ring of Fire Series Book 2 Two months after Alaska, the earth is restless again. Off the coast of Japan, the Pacific begins to boil. Gas vents rip open the seafloor along the Japan Trench. Deep tremors roll beneath Tokyo. Then the rupture comes—a megathrust earthquake powerful enough to shift the planet’s balance. But the quake is only the beginning. Volcanoes erupt in sequence across Japan’s arc. Tsunamis hammer the coast. Ash swallows the sky. Across the western Pacific, the Philippines and Indonesia begin to stir. Geologist Sam Shore and volcanologist Irina Toropova recognize the ...

How history’s most infamous disasters shaped the field of engineering, from the creator of the popular YouTube channel Practical Engineering When a giant bridge collapses, a gas explosion blows up a building, or a major dam bursts, it’s hard not to wonder how things could have gone so...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Negroni is a talented aviation journalist who clearly understands the critically important part the human factor plays in aviation safety.” —Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways 1549, the Miracle on the Hudson A fascinating exploration of...

In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future. "Eunice Wong narrates the band of survivors with tenderness while also conveying their gritty determination as they seek a new life in a world forever...

How often does a single tiny mistake cause an entire civilization to collapse? More often than you think! Listeners of Jared Knott’s book Tiny Blunders/Big Disasters will be amazed at the little things that changed history in a big way. 

Churchill's history of the Second World War is, and will remain, the definitive work. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable for its breadth and sweep and for its sense of personal involvement, it is universally acknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction.

Wade Callahan knows how to fix problems. As a lineman in rural New Mexico, he’s spent his life keeping the power on, the lights working, and the world running the way it’s supposed to… until the day it doesn’t. It starts with a flicker, then the grid goes down, and it doesn’t come back. At first, it feels temporary. The days pass and nothing returns. The world outside begins to go quiet. Cut off from any contact and running out of answers, Wade is forced to do what he’s never had to before—stop fixing the system and start surviving without it, but as supplies thin and ...

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...

They survived capture—only to be imprisoned aboard ships designed for death. During the Second World War, tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees were transported across the Japanese Empire aboard vessels that became known as hell ships. Packed into dark, airless cargo holds, the prisoners endured suffocating heat, starvation, disease, dehydration, beatings, and conditions so overcrowded that men could barely sit or breathe. There were few toilets, almost no medical supplies, and little hope of escape. Yet the greatest danger often came from above. Because many...

As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of...

Beneath the waves lie stories the world was never meant to forget. From the doomed voyage of the Titanic to the eerie silence of the Mary Celeste, Drowned in Silence dives deep into fifteen of the most chilling, mysterious, and tragic sea disasters ever recorded. Author James Calloway brings each tale to life with immersive, emotional storytelling that will haunt readers long after the final page. Survival. Mystery. Loss. The sea remembers everything.

When an extinct Alaskan peak roars back to life, geologist Sam Shore and volcanologist Irina Toropova find themselves at the epicenter of a catastrophe no one saw coming—except one woman. A dead scientist’s impossible theory. A mountain that should have slept forever. A planet edging toward its breaking point. Susan Shore died chasing a theory the scientific world dismissed. A cascading chain reaction beneath the mantle capable of triggering a global seismic collapse. But when Mount Merryman—quiet for millennia—detonates along the Ring of Fire and the Anchorage basin buckles under ...

This "truly essential" audiobook will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems (Margaret Atwood)—and explains how we can solve them. It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us...

In the tradition of Erik Larson's Dead Wake comes The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria, about the sinking of the glamorous Italian ocean liner. In 1956, a stunned world watched as the famous Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria sank after being struck by a Swedish vessel off the coast of Nantucket...

An edge of your seat thrill ride, Blood Moon Apocalypse will grab you from the first sentence and never let go. The moon fell dark before the world was cloaked in crimson—before the world changed forever. On the East Coast of the United States, Christopher Knight’s world divided when the blood moon rose. Shattered and torn, he lost almost everything and everyone he loved. Clinging to a shred of hope, he survived the first night of the changed world—a world that saw most people driven mad, transformed into bloodthirsty murderous husks of human beings. He learned he’d need to draw ...

Do you think the ocean is a dangerous place? Yes, it can be. Titanic…Amoco Cadiz…Herald of Free Enterprise…Exxon Valdez…every shipwreck tells a story. Veteran sea captain Beetashok Chatterjee reveals the stories behind 13 of the greatest civilian maritime disasters, outside the realms of war, that shook the world. Not just for the number of lives lost, but in some cases the damage caused to the environment and livelihoods, or the media attention those incidents garnered. Allow him to take you back in time and on the high seas, where you can watch and learn from these disasters—...

Normalcy is a fragile thing. For the people in these twenty real-life accounts, it shattered in an instant. What happens when the ground opens up, the sky falls, or a wall of fire consumes everything in its path? When the mundane world of deadlines and daily routines is replaced by a desperate fight for the next breath? SURVIVING - Disasters places you directly into the heart of catastrophe. Journey alongside ordinary people—parents, teachers, and commuters—thrown into the most extreme situations imaginable. From catastrophic tsunamis and terrifying wildfires to sudden building ...

What if an entire empire was erased from history—deliberately? For centuries, maps across Europe recorded the vast land of Tartaria—an empire stretching from the edges of Europe deep into Asia. By the 1800s, it vanished completely. No gradual decline. No explanation. Just silence. Echoes of Tartaria: The Mystery of a Forgotten Empire invites you into one of history’s most unsettling enigmas. Was Tartaria a misunderstood cartographic term, or a powerful civilization with advanced knowledge that threatened the modern order? From star forts and monumental architecture to tales of giants ...

16-year-old Josh, a sailor and baseball fan, battles sharks and huge waves after a torpedo sinks the WWII USS Indianapolis battleship.From multi-award-winning Ellie Crowe and Scott Peters comes a high-seas adventure based on the true story of the world's deadliest shark attack on the brave sailors of the United States Navy. 16-year-old Josh is thrilled to be a WW2 sailor aboard the mighty USS Indianapolis. But when a Japanese torpedo strikes in the middle of the night, it tears the battleship in half. As the ship sinks, Josh is plunged deep into the black ocean. In horror, he watches the US...

Discover how Mount Tambora's catastrophic eruption plunged the world into darkness, altering the global climate and inspiring the likes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This remarkable story of disaster and survival is brought to life by the award-winning author of The Mona Lisa Vanishes. The...