Disasters and Development

This is a remarkable book which I found difficult to review, which required my reading it through, at least in part, more than once. This is not because the language is obfuscating. On the contrary the prose is quite lucid and the organization is superb. Repeated reading is necessary because so much information is crowded into the small paperback book that it is difficult to select the individual messages that a reviewer should emphasize.There have for some reason recently been published several books on disaster—some of them specifically directed toward the less developed countries. This book is quite different from all of the others, both recent and old. It deals specifically with the effect of disaster on the process of development. In so doing, however, it goes into many topics which are applicable to the more highly developed countries, as well as to the less developed.