"As Withington demonstrates, floods have always been with us: they killed more than 3 million in China in 1931.
Filled with illustrations, Flood offers a fascinating overview of our relationship with one of humanity's oldest and deadliest foes. Withington also depicts how humans try to defend themselves against these merciless encroaching waters and discusses the increasing danger floods pose in a future beset by climate change. He examines the ancient, catastrophic flood that appears in many religions and cultures and considers how the symbol of the flood has become a key icon in world literatures and a component of the contemporary disaster movie. Withington describes how aspects of floods-the power of nature, human drama, changed landscapes-have fascinated artists, novelists, and filmmakers. In this cultural and natural history of floods, John Withington tells stories of the deadliest floods the world has seen while also exploring the role of the deluge in religion, mythology, literature, and art. Flooding kills far more people than any other natural disaster. They have been used as deliberate acts of war to cause thousands of casualties. I would recommend this book.From the flood that remade the earth in the Old Testament to the 1931 China floods that killed almost four million people, from the broken levees in New Orleans to the almost yearly rising waters of rivers like the Mississippi, floods have many causes: rain, melting ice, storms, tsunamis, failures of dams and levees, acts of vengeful gods. It was a nice change from my normal books. "As a whole very interesting for history buffs a must. With this catalog of calamity, listeners will be engrossed, enlightened, and relieved to realize that despite all the disasters that have befallen humanity, we are still here. This volume offers a unique perspective on our modern fears by revealing how dangerous our world has always been-with examples such as: the Black Death that killed over seventy-five million people in the 1300s the 1883 volcanic eruption on Krakatoa the Irish Potato Famine the 1970 cyclone in Bangladesh and the long-ago volcano in Sumatra that may have wiped out as much as 99% of the world population. and even before.įrom ancient volcanoes and floods to epidemics of cholera and smallpox to Hitler's and Stalin's mass killings in the twentieth century, humanity’s continued existence has always seemed perilous.
But such catastrophic events-as terrible and frightening as they are-have been happening for as long as mankind has walked the Earth. If you follow the news it can seem like injury, sickness, and death are now constant, inescapable occurrences that threaten us every second of every day. A comprehensive catalog of the most devastating and deadly events-natural or man-made-in human history.
0 kommentar(er)
