Natural Disasters: A Bibliography
This bibliography is a compilation from suggestions made through a listserv query on natural occurrences. In no way is the list comprehensive, but it does provide a good starting point when studying natural disaster history. A separate search may be conducted on an individual occurrence or a specific event. I express my appreciation for all who contributed to this project through their responses to my inquiry.
The references are organized into five categories. After the general section, the remaining sources are grouped together based on similar disasters or causes of those calamities. It is my hope that this provides some assistance to those who are also interested in researching this exciting area of study.
Dawn Martindale, graduate student, Utah State University (horizonlite@yahoo.com).
General
Cottrell, William Fredrick. Energy and Society: The
Relationship between Energy, Social Change and Economic
Development. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.
Cronon, William, ed. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: WW Norton and Co., 1995.
Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998.
Fleming, James R., and Goodman, Roy E. International Bibliography of Meteorology: From the Beginning of Printing to 1889. With a forward by E. Philip Kinder. Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing, 1994.
Garcia, Virginia Acosta, ed. Historia y Desastres en America Latina. Bogota: La Red/Ciesas, 1996.
Glacken, Clarence. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
Harris, Stephen L. Agents of Chaos: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Other Natural Disasters. Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1990.
Laskin, David. Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
Odum, Howard T. Environment, Power and Society. New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1971.
Steinberg, Ted. "On the Unnatural History of Disaster in South Florida," Environmental History 2, no. 4 (October 1997): pg?
__________. Slide Mountain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Varley, Anne. Disaster, Development Environments. New York: J. Wiley, 1994.
Watson, Lyall. The Dreams of Dragons: Riddles of Natural History. New York: Morrow, 1987.
Watson, Lyall. Earthwork: Essays on the Edge of Natural History. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1956.
Journals of possible Application:
Disasters
Earthquakes and Volcanoes
National Geographic
Volcano Newsletter
Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis
Alexander, David. Natural Disasters. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1993.
Briffa, K.R., Jones, P.D., Schweingruber, F.H., and Osborn, T.J. "Influence of Volcanic Eruptions on Northern Hemisphere Summer Temperatures Over the Past 600 Years." Nature 393 (1999): 450-5.
Delmas, R.J., Kirkner, S., Palais, J.M., and Petit, J.M. "1000 Years of Explosive Volcanism Recorded at the South Pole." Tellus 44B (1992): 335-50.
Greene, Mott. Natural Knowledge in Preclassical Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Hadfield, Peter. Sixty Seconds that Will Change the World: The Coming Tokyo Earthquake. Boston: C.E. Tutle, Co., 1992.
Harris, Stephen L. Fire and Ice: The Cascade Volcanoes, revised ed. Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1980.
"Hot Spots: Early Warning." Discover (March): 22.
McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989.
Post, John D. The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Stommel, Henry, and Stommel, Elizabeth. Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, The Year Without a Summer. Newport: Seven Seas Press, 1983.
Webster, Noah. A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, with the Principle Phenomena of the Physical World which Proceed and Accompany Them. Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1799.
Zielinski, G.A., Mayewski, P.A., Meeker, L.D., Whitlow, S., Twickler, M.S., Morrison, D.A., Meese, D.A., Gow, A.J. and Alley, R.B. "Record of Volcanism since 7000 B.C. from the GISP2 Greenland Ice Core and Implications for the Volcano-Climate System." Science 264 (1994): 948-55.
Hurricanes, Tornados, Typhoons
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nunez. Castaways: The Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Edited by Enrique Pupo-Walker. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Grazulis, Tom P. Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991. St. Johns Bay: Environmental Films, 1993.
Watson, Lyall. Natural History of the Wind. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
Flood and Drought
Barry, John M. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Erikson, Kai T. Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976.
Jordan, William. The Great Famine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Wildfires
Pyne, Stephen J. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland Fire and Rural Fire. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982.