"Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays based on new research on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Contributors include leading historians publishing in the field of disaster studies, as well as junior scholars. Proceeding from the premise, generally accepted in scholarly circles, that there is no such thing as a "natural" disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts. Beginning with the environmental impact of European colonization and concluding with the COVID-19 pandemic, these essays individually and collectively introduce readers to the thriving field of disaster history. As the subtitle indicates, contributors examine disasters from the often-overlapping perspectives of culture, environment, and public policy. Some essays provide a macro-level view of disasters, emphasizing theoretical approaches and exploring how definitions, rhetoric, and ideas about disaster causation have evolved over long chronological periods. Other essays are case studies, or micro-histories, of particular disasters-an early nineteenth-century earthquake, a New York City fire, a South Carolina hurricane-that are compelling stories and also points of entry into the lives of communities and individuals as they endured disaster-related hardships that both revealed and often exacerbated existing social tensions and conflicts. The collection is a lively and original contribution to the field of disaster studies. Its relatively short and accessible essays will make it attractive to general readers and uniquely suitable for course adoption in disaster history classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Rethinking American Disasters features a valuable and up-to-date introduction that draws on the latest work to define "disaster," summarize both the history and current state of the field, and introduce essential themes to help readers understand disasters not only as catastrophic and often tragic events but also as revealing historical phenomena"--