America's Great Disasters

The book addresses a wide variety of disasters: floods, dam failures, droughts, storms, fires, building collapses, earthquakes, volcanoes, industrial and mining accidents, and transportation calamities. Included, of course, are all the better known catastrophes: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; the Blizzard of `88; the Johnstown Flood of 1889; the Galveston Hurricane of 1900; the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906; the sinking of the Titanic in 1912; the Hindenburg Explosion at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937; the Texas City Explosion in 1947; the Eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1981; and the Challenger accident in 1986, etc.