Review of Rethinking American Disasters , edited by Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803; 2023; ISBN 9780807179932; 256 pp.; $34.95.

Understanding disasters in the United States requires far more than the cataloging of hazards or the tallying of losses.It requires examining how historical, political, cultural, and economic forces shape risk, influence response, and determine whose experiences are preserved, or erased, in the nation's memory.Rethinking American Disasters takes this premise seriously.The editors bring together 12 essays spanning four centuries of US disaster history, collectively arguing that disasters are not "natural" events but are socially produced moments whose consequences reflect structural inequities, governance failures, and cultural narratives.This framing aligns with the foundational work of Steinberg (2006), Rozario (2007), and Knowles (2011), and others who assert that disasters expose, and often intensify, underlying systems of vulnerability.The book's chronological breadth, from colonial hurricanes to the COVID-19 pandemic, allows readers to observe evolving patterns in how communities prepare for, interpret, and recover from catastrophe.The contributors represent a distinguished group of historians and disaster scholars whose collective body of work has shaped the historiography of hazards, vulnerability, and governance in the United States.Benjamin Carp, Caroline Grego, Richard Mizelle, and Scott Knowles, among others, are known for examining how disasters reveal the underlying racial, political, economic, and infrastructural systems that define community resilience and inequity.Taken together, the contributors bring deep expertise in uncovering overlooked narratives, contextualizing disasters within broader structures of power, and challenging conventional understandings of "natural" catastrophe.Their collective scholarship grounds the volume in both rigorous historical research and contemporary theoretical frameworks, making the book an essential resource for understanding how disasters have shaped, and continue to shape, American society.Early chapters show how colonial communities interpreted hazards through religious frameworks and relied on mutual aid, while Indigenous experiences were frequently misrepresented or omitted from written records.By the nineteenth century, industrialization introduced new technological risks, such as steamboat explosions and large urban fires, that disproportionately affected immigrant and working-class neighborhoods.The chapters that consider the 20th century explore the rise of federal disaster systems, the bureaucratization of emergency management, and the institutional practices that continue to shape differential access to response and recovery.The volume's 21st-century cases, including pandemics and climate-driven events, reveal a landscape marked by political polarization, contested expertise, and the rapid circulation of crisis narratives on digital platforms.