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Epidemics, Meltdowns, and Climate Change — Books about Catastrophes, Disaster, and Existential Threats

As promised in last week’s blog, our spring roundup of science books continues with three books (or four, depending on how you count them) about catastrophes.
It is a topic that is important in my own writing history. My third book Catastrophe! Great Engineering Failure–and Success (1995) was a Selector’s Choice on the National Science Teachers Association list of best science trade books for children. Its theme was about how engineers learn from failures, and its chapters included many spectacular events where things went disastrously wrong. One of those events is described in great detail in Chernobyl: The History of


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