Book ID: CBB001422707

Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003 (2015)

unapi

Keller, Richard C. (Author)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2015
Physical Details: 240 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

In a cemetery on the southern outskirts of Paris lie the bodies of nearly a hundred of what some have called the first casualties of global climate change. They were the so-called abandoned victims of the worst natural disaster in French history, the devastating heat wave that struck in August 2003, leaving 15,000 dead. They died alone in Paris and its suburbs, and were then buried at public expense, their bodies unclaimed. They died, and to a great extent lived, unnoticed by their neighbors--their bodies undiscovered in some cases until weeks after their deaths. Fatal Isolation tells the stories of these victims and the catastrophe that took their lives. It explores the multiple narratives of disaster--the official story of the crisis and its aftermath, as presented by the media and the state; the life stories of the individual victims, which both illuminate and challenge the ways we typically perceive natural disasters; and the scientific understandings of disaster and its management. Fatal Isolation is both a social history of risk and vulnerability in the urban landscape and a story of how a city copes with emerging threats and sudden, dramatic change.

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Reviewed By

Review Elena Conis (January 2018) Review of "Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003". Environmental History (pp. 208-210). unapi

Review Andrew Newman (January 2018) Review of "Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003". Technology and Culture (pp. 178-179). unapi

Review Caroline Hannaway (2017) Review of "Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 237-238). unapi

Review Ted Steinberg (2016) Review of "Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 358-359). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001422707/

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Authors & Contributors
Mahony, Martin
Gramelsberger, Gabriele
McKittrick, Meredith
Martin, Max
Chester S. Dunning
Munger, Michael Sean
Concepts
Climate change
Climate and climatology
Weather
Disasters; catastrophes
Science and politics
Environmental history
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
18th century
Early modern
Places
United States
South Africa
Australia
North Carolina (U.S.)
Great Britain
Institutions
National Weather Service (U.S.)
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