Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis

Montano debuts with a compelling account of her career: from a teen volunteering in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. After witnessing firsthand the devastation in New Orleans, Montano sought to improve the way the U.S. handled increasingly frequent natural and man-made disasters. Her memoir takes readers through a history of federal responses to some of the earliest national crises, including the 1927 Mississippi River flood, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression; she notes these crises’ disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. More recently, FEMA was established in 1979 to handle all phases of emergency management. When FEMA was placed under the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11, it muddied the mission and slowed response time, Montano writes. Turning her focus to the COVID-19 pandemic, she notes that the George W. Bush administration foresaw the disastrous potential of a pandemic and began preparations, but were those early efforts enough?