Doom: The Politics of CatastropheA provocative, original and compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises, and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death