Scott Gabriel Knowles is Associate Professor of History and Politics at Drexel College and Associate Dean and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry at Pennoni Honors College. He is also editor of Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The Devil's Privilege
2 Reforming Fire
3 The Invisible Screen of Safety
4 Ten to Twenty Million Killed, Tops
5 What Is a Disaster?
6 A Nation of Hazards
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments