"A classic. I can't recommend it enough."--Chris Hayes On Thursday,
July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in which the
temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index, which measures
how the temperature actually feels on the body, would hit 126 degrees
by the time the day was over. Meteorologists had been warning
residents about a two-day heat wave, but these temperatures did not
end that soon. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had
buckled; the records for electrical use were shattered; and power
grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two
days. And by July 20, over seven hundred people had perished-more than
twice the number that died in the Chicago Fire of 1871, twenty times
the number of those struck by Hurricane Andrew in 1992—in the great
Chicago heat wave, one of the deadliest in American history. Heat
waves in the United States kill more people during a typical year than
all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could explain
either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of the
deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists and
medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of the
trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of the
city's vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us inside
the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a "social
autopsy," examining the social, political, and institutional organs of
the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it ought to
have been. Starting with the question of why so many people died at
home alone, Klinenberg investigates why some neighborhoods experienced
greater mortality than others, how the city government responded to
the crisis, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials
reported on and explained these events. Through a combination of years
of fieldwork, extensive interviews, and archival research, Klinenberg
uncovers how a number of surprising and unsettling forms of social
breakdown—including the literal and social isolation of seniors, the
institutional abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment
of public assistance programs—contributed to the high fatality
rates. The human catastrophe, he argues, cannot simply be blamed on
the failures of any particular individuals or organizations. For when
hundreds of people die behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of
contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies,
everyone is implicated in their demise. As Klinenberg demonstrates in
this incisive and gripping account of the contemporary urban
condition, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American
cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made visible have by no means
subsided as the temperatures returned to normal. The forces that
affected Chicago so disastrously remain in play in America's cities,
and we ignore them at our peril. For the Second Edition Klinenberg has
added a new Preface showing how climate change has made extreme
weather events in urban centers a major challenge for cities and
nations across our planet, one that will require commitment to
climate-proofing changes to infrastructure rather than just relief
responses.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226276212
Publisert
2018
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter