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A C T S G O D of Also by Ted Steinberg Slide Mountain, Or the Folly of Owning Nature Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England A C T S G O D of The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America TED STEINBERG 3 2000 3 Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Warsaw Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 2000by Ted Steinberg Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Portions of chapter six were previously published in Literature and Medicine15, no. 1 (Spring 1996); a version of chapter three was previously published in Environmental History2, no. 4 (Oct. 1997). Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For the little big men in my life Nathan and Harry There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence. Mark Twain We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents when they are the inevitabilities of our projects. Stanley Cavell C O N T E N T S Preface xi Introduction • Hometown Blues xv I RETURN OF THE SUPPRESSED One • Last Call for Judgment Day 3 Two • Disaster as Archetype 25 Three • Do-It-Yourself Deathscape 47 Interlude • Body Counting 69 II FEDERALIZING RISK Four • Building for Apocalypse 79 Five • Uncle Sam—Floodplain Recidivist 97 Interlude • The Perils of Private Property 117 ix x Contents III CONTAINING CALAMITY Six • The Neurotic Life of Weather Control 127 Seven • Forecasting at the Fair Weather Service 149 Eight • Who Pays? 173 Epilogue • Remembering McKinneysburg 197 Notes 203 Bibliography 265 Index 281