Man and society in disaster.

Over the past years, several volumes— highly variable in quality—concerned with the reactions of the human mechanism in disaster situations have been presented to the public. Editors George W. Baker and Dwight W. Chapman offer a much different type of work—one which deals with the development of a program for research into the emotional forces at work in times of extreme stress and which attempts to answer two questions, Are emotional reactions predictable in time of total war or natural disaster? and, if predictable, What can be done? Drawing upon the research efforts and thinking of 17 renowned behavioral scientists, the editors lead the reader through a definition of the comparatively new field of disaster research into a delineation of the reactions of individuals and social units in disaster situations which is followed by a plan for coping with predicted behavior. The book closes with a discussion of other views