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Ted Steinberg’s Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America deals with the human dimension of natural disasters. Steinberg suggests three issues with which his research and analysis attempt to define. He looks at the role of human complicity in response to disasters, the rise in a particular set of social relations in an attempt to restore order, and the ways in which people have attempted to rationalize natural disasters as events beyond human control. He poses questions like, “Why have those in power, for example, at times denied the risks of living in seismically active areas? Whose vision of society is at stake when nature and culture collide? How and why have some Americans come to view natural disasters as amoral, chance occurrences?” (xvii-ix). Steinberg suggests these three themes intersect with three fields of study: environmental history (interactions between humans and nature), social history (power), and cultural history (meaning and interpretation). Thus, with his brief but detailed outline of his structure, readers are fully aware of Steinberg’s agenda, a very political agenda. He states, “Ultimately, this book critiques the approach to natural calamity that has dominated U.S. politics over the last century. This approach has tended to overemphasize the natural forces at place while diminishing the human, social, and economic forces central to these phenomena” (xix). Thus, according to Steinberg, when viewed as “freak events” as separate from everyday life, natural disasters are posited outside the boundaries of the ordinary; therefore, no one individual or group of people is held accountable.
The title Acts of God comes from the once popular (in some areas it still is) belief that natural disasters happened as a result of God’s disappointment with humans. If a certain area experienced an earthquake or flood, it had to be because the people living there had displeased God and this was to be there punishment, a sign they needed to change their ways. This notion became popular in the eighteenth century, and quite possibly before then. Steinberg states, “For the colonists, what we now call natural disasters were events heavily laden with moral meaning. They were morality tales that the God-fearing told to one another” (xxi). This theme stayed prominent into the nineteenth century. In some cases, these events moved those who strayed from their faith to turn back to religion and become God-fearing people again. Steinberg suggests that twentieth-century efforts at secularization helped to demoralize nature and its powers as well as these events being an act of God. However, roughly one-fifth of the current population still believes moral lessons can be learned from the extremes of nature. Steinberg also suggests that some use the God-fearing method as a simple way to evade human accountability. While the demoralization of nature has been a positive, Steinberg recognizes negatives to this. He believes this demoralization came with the federal government’s role in rationalizing disasters. This has especially been the case since World War II. The government provided now offered relief to those in disaster-struck areas. Steinberg states, “For the most part, these changes helped to underwrite increasing development in hazardous areas” (xxii). He suggests this transition severed the risk from physical space. Thus, when a disaster occurred, deciding who to blame became difficult. He states, “Natural disasters have come to be seen as random, morally inert phenomena—chance events that lie beyond the control of human beings” (xxiii). Steinberg provides a great example of how humans can warp nature into something that it is not. He mentions Hurricane Hugo from 1989 and how new reports exaggerated the wind speed. One report mentioned a wind speed of 150 miles per hour, while some said 135 miles per hour. However, sustained winds were actually between ninety and ninety-five miles per hour. Steinberg suggests that since the 1960s engineers have known about the need for better building requirements in hurricane-prone areas but chose not to act. Thus, the hurricane turned out to be as destructive became of man and not nature; therefore, the media needed to make a connection between the event and the resulting effects.
Section I is titled “Return of the Suppressed,” followed by Section II, “Federalizing Risk” and Section III, “Containing Calamity.” Steinberg starts off with the story of the August 31, 1886 Charleston earthquake. Charleston experienced several bouts with disaster long before the 1886 earthquake. Disasters struck Charleston as far back as the late 1600s. Hurricanes, smallpox, drought, fire, and storms attacked Charleston. The years 1783, 1787, 1792, 1797 and 1800 proved to be detrimental to Charleston as storms struck, and in some cases resulted in death. However, Steinberg suggests that the earthquake surprised many. Disasters before this one were the result of weather, disease or war. Steinberg coins the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as the archetypal disaster, but not an archetype for reasons one might think. The quake is by far the most sizeable (in magnitude) on record. He states, “Moreover, the notorious San Francisco quake, for all the tremendous attention lavished on this one slip of earth, has hardly had the effect on development and building in the city that one would expect. In this sense, the disaster has both tremendous meaning and almost no meaning at all, at least not in its impact on reducing seismic risk throughout the bay area” (26). Steinberg suggests that with disasters such as the San Francisco quake, other areas of seismic activity or areas of potential seismic activity received, and in some cases continue to receive, less attention. He specifically wants his readers to think about the difference between the risk of an earthquake and the risk of disaster. There is a difference, and one he suggests is often overlooked. Steinberg transitions from earthquakes to hurricanes. He talks about how hurricanes became naturalized when the U.S. Weather Bureau used gendered names to identify the storms. He states, “Women hurricanes were routinely described in the 1950s as wild, capricious, fickle, whimsical, and erratic, creating the sense that nature was literally out of control, when of course economic development, driven by private property, was as much if not more than nature to blame for disaster” (68). Florida boosters and others who sought to profit from property saw this as a positive for their system. Steinberg’s research is brought full-circle when he talks about more current disasters such as Hurricane Camille and the 1989 California earthquake and its impact. Thus, the response to natural disasters might appear to be different, but the same underlying issues and thoughts two hundred years still exist.
Steinberg is very passionate about his work and analyzes these natural disasters in interesting and thought-provoking ways. He is conscious of the social climates and uses stories of how marginalized groups were treated as a social justice outlet. His primary concern is to bring these issues together and bring about awareness. This book, this first edition is now fourteen years old, stands a marker and foundation for the environmental justice movement. His writing is compelling and demands that readers begin to understand the impact humans have on the environment and how humans can stand in the way of nature’s happenings. This is most certainly a call-to-action approach to environmental history and history as a whole. He allows each natural disaster to tell the history of the period in which it occurred.
Steinberg wants his readers to do what those who have experienced nature’s extremes have thus failed to do—learn and make changes that have the potential to alleviate destruction. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina Steinberg released a revised edition of his book. Published approximately one year after the storm hit, the book has an added section about the hurricane and its impact. Steinberg talks (in the first edition) about what he warned would happen if humans did not heed his advice.
While I agree with many of Steinberg’s assertions, a book review should not be written without a critical lens. Thus, Steinberg’s passion can also stand in his way. Ultimately, Steinberg suggests that humans should be faulted for building in disaster-prone areas and/or not building structures that can withstand these events. Humans ignore safety reports and continue their attempt to win the battle of human vs. nature. What about the events that happen where a disaster has never occurred?