THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS

An eye-opening look at the disasters that have troubled humans throughout history—and why they seem to be increasing in frequency.

Think the news about tornadoes in December, rising sea levels, raging fires, and massive blizzards comes at us fast and furious today? Give it another few years, writes disaster-management expert Kayyem, faculty director of the Homeland Security Project and the Security and Global Health Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and our time will seem like a golden age. The devil of her title is always working mischief in some place or another. We tend to respond poorly because, Kayyem suggests, we may be preparing ourselves for the wrong disaster. On that score, the author examines the tragic fate of the California town of Paradise, which was consumed by a fire that burned an area the size of Chicago. Kayyem notes that houses were built right up against unmanaged forests that were full of flammable debris, while the town’s developers, seeking a kind of gated community without the gates, put in only one narrow road that was subject to being walled off by flames. The good news, writes the author, is that the town is now being rebuilt with lessons learned in mind. This speaks to another of Kayyem’s points: Humans sometimes don’t learn from earlier mistakes. She cites an old stone tablet near Fukushima, Japan, that bears the warning, “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build homes below this point” lest they be destroyed by a tsunami, which is exactly what happened in 2011. Kayyem explodes many myths, noting, for example, that there was a point to the worry about Y2K, the disastrous effects of which did not materialize precisely because people prepared for it. “The only response to the preparedness paradox,” she concludes, “is a commitment to sustained preparedness; being ready will seem not that outside the norm.”

An urgent, useful survival manual for our time.