Recommended Books
For a deeper understanding of the nation’s emergency response capabilities, disaster preparedness and the other related topics that create the headlines every day, these selected books, authored by national security and disaster experts, provide a valuable resource.
To order works directly, simply click on the thumbnail or title.
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Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared
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“Years after September 11, 2001, the United States is drastically underfunding local emergency responders and remains dangerously unprepared to handle an attack on American soil, particularly one involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or catastrophic conventional weapons ”
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Americans at Risk, by Irwin Redlener
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“Dr. Redlener's page-turning account offers an insider's look at the increasing number of problems we face as the nation prepares for large-scale disasters.”
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The Edge of Disaster, by Stephen Flynn
“Dr. Stephen Flynn, author of the bestselling America the Vulnerable, describes America's crumbling industrial landscape and our own negligence in this thought-provoking effort.”
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The Upside of Down, by Thomas Homer-Dixon
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“Political scientist and award-winning author Thomas Homer-Dixon makes a compelling argument about society's vulnerability to catastrophic global breakdown. While drawing parallels between modern society's stressors and those faced by the Roman Empire, Homer-Dixon begs for social, economic and technological renewal to avoid the inevitable.”
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One Second After, by William R. Forstchen
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“New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies. - Cover”
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The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, by Douglas Brinkley
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“As a Professor of History at Tulane University and a New Orleans resident, author Douglas Brinkley experiences the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina every day. This moving narrative chronicles the life-and-death struggles of everyday heroes and reveals the incompetence of officials that were overwhelmed even before one of our nation’s worst disasters made landfall.”
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The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans Are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War
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“With America’s attention fixated on who will step into the Oval Office in 2009, no one has noticed where the real power has shifted—to a vast network of unelected officials whose authority has grown wildly out of control. In his latest blockbuster book, acclaimed defense and national security reporter Bill Gertz exposes these astonishingly powerful leaders and their enablers in the political class—and their devastating impact on America's national security.”
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America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism
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“The most gripping portion of Stephen Flynn's examination of America's defense shortcomings in the war on terror arrives early. The entire second chapter imagines an elaborate but feasible dirty-bomb attack that brings the nation's transportation system to a halt and presents the President with two dreadful options: reopen borders closed by the emergency and risk further attack, or inspect everything that comes into the country and accept the cataclysmic economic consequences. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and veteran of the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations, paints a picture of a government that is flailing in its efforts to protect its citizens.”
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Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies
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“Treachery is the apt title of a new book infuriating to read. . . . For years [Gertz] has bulldogged a story that ‘mainstream’ media strangely soft-pedal. And he won’t let go. His sources are the best.”
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Seeds of Fire: China And The Story Behind The Attack On America
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“Author Gordon Thomas - whose new book, Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack on America, skyrocketed to 49 in amazon.com sales rank listings in two days, has just learned that Jonathan Pollard - the spy convicted of espionage against the United States 17 years ago - was secretly visited in his U.S. Federal Prison on Monday, January 7 by former Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Natanyahu. Pollard - who is a central figure in Thomas' Seeds of Fire - was convicted of espionage against the United States. ‘But I am told on the highest authority in Israel that Natanyahu's visit is the first step in persuading the Bush administration to set him free so he can go to Israel, the country for whom he spied,’ said Thomas.”
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The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why
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“Reading The Unthinkable will be life-changing. We live in an age of anxiety that has too many of us rocked back on our heels. Once you’ve feasted on the rich insights and wisdom of this remarkable book, you’ll be standing tall again. While our politicians and media have been keen to exploit and fan our worst fears, Amanda Ripley makes clear that individually and collectively we can meet head-on the hazards that periodically befall us. We need not be afraid!”
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The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
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“A controversial hit that sparked debate among businessmen, environmentalists and bloggers. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler is an eye-opening look at the unprecedented challenges we face in the years ahead, as oil runs out and the global system built on it are forced to change radically.”
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A Government Ill Executed: The Decline of the Federal Service and How to Reverse It
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“Paul Light has made a major contribution to rethinking federal bureaucracy at a crucial time in its evolution. With the retirement of the baby boom bureaucrats there will be a greater opportunity to rethink and reshape the federal government than at any time since the New Deal. If it is done with the kind of thoughtfulness Light proposes it could profoundly improve the delivery of government services and the quality of the federal workforce.”
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Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
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“Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-related fevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclear winter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a new killing field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of mass destruction--by doctors who had committed themselves to creating a biological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story of Russia's darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold War secret.”
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Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack
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“Based on his first-hand experiences and observations of how the Department of Homeland Security is failing to make America safe, Ervin shows the real threats we face--from nuclear attack to homegrown terrorism. Pushed out by the White House for refusing to sugarcoat its failures, Ervin candidly discusses the circumstances of his departure. He takes the reader inside the decision-making councils of this newest department of the U.S. government, and shows how his team's prescriptions for urgent change were ignored--leaving the US vulnerable to another terrorist attack.”
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Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes, Revised and Updated Edition
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“From desperate interest rate cuts and chaos in global financial markets to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a fast-crumbling tower of public and private debt, Wall Street insider Michael J. Panzner exposes the cracks in the dike, the looming economic threats, and the vast array of promises and obligations that will ultimately go unfulfilled.”
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Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis
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“In Empire of Debt, maverick financial writers Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin provide you with the first in-depth look at how the American character has shifted to accommodate its new imperial role; how we have abandoned the private virtues of personal liberty, economic freedom, and fiscal restraint; and how the government has gained control of public life and the economy.”
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Origins of the Fourth World War : And the Coming Wars of Mass Destruction
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“J. R. Nyquist tells a truth that even knowledgable [sic] Americans do not want to hear: We are not necessarily the world's only superpower and while we have been busy bragging, the Russians and the Chinese have been busy developing producing and deploying new nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. We are endangered not by missile attacks from rogue nations, but from China and Russia who are capable of threatening us with modern weapons we have intentionally neglected to build. Mr,[sic] Nyquist lays out his case in a series of notes, each one standing alone, but which cause us to think. He has made a real, but unpleasant, case. We should take his warning seriously”
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Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World
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“Hegemon is as timely as today's headlines about Chinese efforts to influence U.S. elections and steal U.S. nuclear secrets. But it is also a masterful work of scholarship that reinforces Steven Mosher's reputation as one of our most thoughtful and provocative China watchers.”
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Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America
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“You need to read Unrestricted Warfare because it reveals China's game plan in its coming war with America... China thinks it can destroy America by using these tactics. - Admiral Thomas Moorer, USN (ret.) Former chairman of Join Chiefs of Staff”
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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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“Essential reading... Collapse [shows] that resilient societies are nimble ones, capable of long-term planning and of abandoning deeply entrenched but ultimately destructive core values and beliefs.”
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The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower
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“The most important and original book on the Middle East to appear in many years. Baer’s subject is the growing power of Iran; his goal is ending the pattern of American failure; his message is that we’ve been backing the wrong horse. This is a book McCain and Obama should ponder.” —Thomas Powers
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Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization
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“The counterterrorism expert John Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries with relative ease and to carry out small, inexpensive actions—like sabotaging an oil pipeline—that generate a huge return. He shows how combating the shutdown of the world’s oil, high-tech, and financial markets could cost us the thing we’ve come to value the most—worldwide economic and cultural integration—and what we must do now to safeguard against this new method of warfare. ”
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