Events

Published in 2015 by the University of Chicago Press, Richard Keller's Fatal Isolation tells the stories of the devastating heat wave that struck in August 2003, and of the victims of the disaster. It explores the multiple narratives of catastrophe-- the official story of the crisis and its aftermath, as presented by the media and the state; the life stories of the individual victims, which both illuminate and challenge the ways we typically perceive natural disasters; and the scientific understandings of disaster and its management. Fatal Isolation is both a social history of risk and vulnerability in the urban landscape and a story of how a city copes with emerging threats and sudden, dramatic change.