“If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. ‘Nothing in the paper today’, we sigh” (Lord Acton). American history has rarely been measured only by noting it through a string of disasters, catastrophes and tragedies; so, compiling a book about human suffering and the chronic destruction of American infrastructures is a provocative choice. I don't want to call this kind of reading “fun” but it is. Disasters and Tragic Events: An Encyclopedia of Catastrophes in American History is closer to a voyeuristic compendium of guilty pleasures involving natural disasters and cumulative bad behaviour, than a genuine marker of American history. And in part it most certainly is like reading certain back issues of People magazine: listings of the Donner Party cannibalism ordeal, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the Station nightclub fire – although interesting – don't necessarily seem like events on a scale large enough or significant enough to be more than tick marks along the historical path of American development. And yet the historical backdrop of the Donner Party event and the consequences of the Lindbergh kidnapping do indeed point to some significance in America's past.
The usual natural disasters, fires, explosions, shootings and other singular physical events that one would expect to be in a compendium of this sort are indeed present, but perhaps less expected, is the incorporation of some of America's political, cultural and financial crises. It is these less tangibly defined events that tell a more inclusive story of the USA that can span years or decades, and often require collective self-reflection on who we are and how we got here. Slavery is listed in the first volume. So are Jim Crow laws and the New Orleans mass lynching of Italians. The 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression are there. Blacklisting, Thalidomide and AIDS show up in Volume Two. These entries perhaps tell a less sensationalistic story of American development, but still continue to demand our attention and understanding.
But judging certain events in qualitative or quantitative measurements of importance is difficult at best and highly subjective at worst. Removing bias from judgment also removes the very act of judgment, and so what are we left with? We could politely call it evaluation or perhaps even more politely, editing; but some form of personal bias will always remain. So how did editor Mitchell Newton-Matza avoid bias in deciding what disasters and tragedies to include in these volumes? He simply wrote a preface. This preface serves as a disclaimer to cover the inevitable disagreements that will arise among readers about the inclusion or exclusion of certain events. Obviously not intended as an exhaustive list, the editor considered how life-altering certain events were, the impact of the aftermath and the consequences that followed.
One might be able to write without obvious bias, but is it more difficult to make editorial decisions without such bias? The Introduction to Disasters and Tragic Events penetrates the editorial process somewhat further and gives readers – and teachers – the opportunity to discuss questions raised by tragic events. Reading further through the introduction, though, it becomes noticeable that some tiny seeds of personal opinion do linger despite our best attempts to bury them. But the human element of bias cannot – and according to Newton-Matza – should not be controlled. If we step away from our tendency as readers to look only for agreement with our own nods to entries in compiled lists, we may open up a wider avenue of thought (where is the 2008 housing crisis and the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, for instance? See, I digress).
If personal bias exists in the editorial decisions, the discourse by the various authors in Disasters counterbalances this drawback. Each entry is thoughtful and written with insight into the connectivity of these events with other historical events. Numerous references throughout both volumes boost the teaching value of this publication, and the formatting makes it a pleasure to use as a handy reference guide. Still, approaching American history from the unconventional perspective of disasters and tragedies, while interesting, does feel somewhat gimmicky. But it does open up the doors for a new way of teaching American history; and in an ever-increasing voyeuristic culture, this may be just what the teacher ordered.
