Katrina

There have been a couple really, really incredible books about Hurricane Katrina.  Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere and Zane and the Hurricane are two of the best books that I have ever read.  I Survived Hurricane Katrina is the third in the I Survived series and it is a good one, but it isn't like those two.  Of course, it is written for a younger audience.

Still, I would recommend this for anyone who likes the series and/or wants to know more about this terrible disaster that was both natural and man-made.  

Fire! Fire!

These guys were pretty funny.  The Great Chicago Fire was not.  The book, The Great Fire, by Jim Murphy, was excellent.  A Newbery Honor Book, and well deserved.
Mr. Murphy brings the past alive.  I had no idea about the classism factor that was a part of the fire.  I do remember the story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow and hearing Judy sing, "Shout how-now to Mrs. O'Leary's cow." But somewhere in my head I thought that maybe the whole cow story was a myth, but it wasn't.
The way that the poor were blamed for the fire was shocking, but then as I consider the human condition, I guess it isn't, still it is hard to read.
One of the players in this book was exceptionally horrid.  The newspaper reporter...I can't think of his name, and maybe that is best.  He should just be forgotten.  I wonder if this kind of blame goes on today when there are disasters.  Sadly, I bet it does.
Just like in Blizzard, it is just crazy to think about how hard it was to navigate the world before the advances in technology that we enjoy today.  Firefighters of yesterday and today are heroes, truly.  How many people would run INTO a fire while the rest of us are running away?

Just not sure...

why a book like Blizzard isn't as popular as the I Survived series.  This was the first book I've ever read by Jim Murphy and the first I ever heard of the Great Blizzard of 1888.  Which was a REALLY bad storm!  This book is super well done.  I am not a history fan.  I am especially not a history fan of any time in history before WW2 and so for a book to get and keep my attention, the way that this one did, that is saying something.  It made me want to read more about this blizzard, and more by Murphy. 
The other thing that was really interesting here was the whole history of the National Weather Service.  A lot of folks, like me remember when you had to read a newspaper or watch tv or listen to the radio to find out the weather forecast.  Now it is available on your phone at any time.  Before that it was available on the computer at any time.  But back in these days?  Just crazy, crazy how it all went down!  A great read. 

Disaster!

Back in my days in the south, Bethel Park, PA, my buddy Rachel and I would run around having disasters very often.  "I'm having a disaster!" could be heard nearly every day.  Now of course, we were a bit dramatic.  There is no need for Lauren Tarshis to write an I Survived the 1990s in Bethel Park.  Bethel Park was a wonderful place in which to work, shop, eat, learn, karaoke and have adventures.

The disasters written about in The Unthinkable:  Who Survives When Disaster Strikes- and Why are the serious, horrible disasters.  The man-made and the natural disasters.  I read this one because I really enjoyed Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way. 

This was a very quick read, even though it is hard to hear about horrible tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina and September 11.  It was fascinating to read about Rick Rescorla, a true hero of a man who made it possible for nearly all of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees to evacuate the tower by putting into place advanced evacuation plans and by keeping a cool head during the attack.    There have been studies done, physiologcial and psychological, to determine if survivors have something extra or something less which makes them able to survive disasters while others perish.  Interesting stuff here. 

When I was a little girl...

we had a book around the house about fire disasters, Going to Blazes.  I remember this book being both scary and fascinating.   There were chapters on the fire at Cocoanut Grove, the Hartford Circus (also the topic of this book I read and loved) and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.  I don't remember reading about the Hartford Circus back then, but the Triangle Fire stuck with me, I think because the pictures were so graphic and I was a young girl reading the book, learning about young girls whose lives seemed so very different from mine and were lost so horrifically.

So there was this dirtbag, Max Blanck and this other creep, Isaac Harris.  These guys owned the factory.  They themselves had escaped their native Russia because of the religious persecution and the pogroms of the Russian Empire.  They came to America penniless and worked their way up and then they hired young girls who had also escaped their countries of origin due to the same pogroms or starvation or other forms of hell.  When they hired these girls they paid them nothing, they worked them nearly to death in horribly unsafe places.  And this horrible fire breaks out and kills more than a hundred of them.  Harris and Blanck get fined.  Nice.  And then years later, Blanck is fined again.   Again.  For doing the same stuff.  Locking doors so workers in his factory can't get out.  Nice.  Really freakin nice.  Blanck and Harris.  Good going.  Nice.  I hope you made a lot of money and felt really good about it.  Nice.  If you read more about Blanck and Harris, I suggest that you make sure your blood pressure is under control.  It is VERY upsetting.
Uprising is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, but it is more than that.  It is the story of gender and class and immigration and prejudice and suffrage, and well, this book has a lot to think about and I think it would be an excellent book discussion group for moms and daughters, grandmas and daughters, etc.