Disaster progressivism.

AuthorWalker, Jesse
PositionBriefly Noted - Jacob Remes' "Disaster Citizenship" - Brief article - Book review

Spontaneous cooperation, not social chaos, is the norm after a natural ortechnological disaster. That fact looms large in Jacob Remes' Disaster Citizenship (University of Illinois Press), a book that looks at two devastating events--a 1914 fire in Salem, Massachusetts, and a 1917 shipyard explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia--and shows what happened when that grassroots mutual aid ran headfirst into the Progressive Era's passion for rule by "expert" professionals.

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Remes examines everything from ethnic networks to labor politics to the battle for control of government aid. (The...

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