On Thursday, July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index, which measures how the temperature actually feels on the body, would hit 126 degrees by the time the day was over. Meteorologists had been warning residents about a two-day heat wave, but these temperatures did not end that soon. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had buckled; the records for electrical use were shattered; and power grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two days. And by July 20, over seven hundred people had perished-more than twice the number that died in the Chicago Fire of 1871, twenty times the number of those struck by Hurricane Andrew in 1992—in the great Chicago heat wave, one of the deadliest in American history.
Heat waves in the United States kill more people during a typical year than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of the city's vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a "social autopsy," examining the social, political, and institutional organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it ought to have been.
Starting with the question of why so many people died at home alone, Klinenberg investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater mortality than others, how the city government responded to the crisis, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported on and explained these events. Through a combination of years of fieldwork, extensive interviews, and archival research, Klinenberg uncovers how a number of surprising and unsettling forms of social breakdown—including the literal and social isolation of seniors, the institutional abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment of public assistance programs—contributed to the high fatality rates. The human catastrophe, he argues, cannot simply be blamed on the failures of any particular individuals or organizations. For when hundreds of people die behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies, everyone is implicated in their demise.
As Klinenberg demonstrates in this incisive and gripping account of the contemporary urban condition, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made visible have by no means subsided as the temperatures returned to normal. The forces that affected Chicago so disastrously remain in play in America's cities, and we ignore them at our peril.
A great expose into the frailty of our social structure. When asked about weather related events that incur the deaths of hundreds of people, most think of hurricanes, floods, of large tornado outbreaks. Few would think that summer heat would bring on the deaths of over 700 people. As a weather buff, I'd have enjoyed reading more about the atmospheric conditions that brought about the heat wave. But, that's not the authors intentions. His focus is on how a large metropolitan area can be brought to it's knees by a sustained heat wave. It's also largely a story of the "have's" and the "have nots". People in poverty-stricken areas or living on a low or fixed income suffered the most. Deprived of relief from the heat in any way, some literally suffocated to death in their apartments. While a heat wave like this is almost an annual occurrence here in Oklahoma, for the residents of Chicago, it was indeed a tragic yet forgotten disaster of historical proportions.
one of the best books I've read If you like nonfiction that reads like a page-turner, you will love this book. Klinenberg examines this amazing event in Chicago's history from every possible perspective: meteorological, historical, political, economic, sociological, anthropological, geographical. It's a brilliant work and reads a lot like "The Perfect Storm" in that you learn about a fascinating and true event, but you learn so much more, in unexpected directions. Highly, highly recommended.
A very interesting, if somewhat dry and academic, book On Thursday, July 13, 1995, the temperature in Chicago climbed to 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Over the course of the next week, while the city sweltered in the stifling heat, and power grids failed, people began to die - often senior-citizens that felt trapped in their own homes. Before long, the nation was treated to images of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office storing bodies in refrigerated trucks donated by a meat company, while city officials sought scapegoats. By the time the heat wave ended, after July 20, some 739 more people had died in Chicago than was statistically to be expected, at least 485 of whom had died directly from heat-related causes.
In this book, author and assistant professor of Sociology, Eric Klinenberg, looks at what happened during that long and torturous week, what were some of the root causes of the disaster, and what can be learned from it. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting, if somewhat dry and academic, book.
I do, though, have two minor complaints about the book. First of all, while the author excoriates then recent city-wide reforms that were still in the process of being implemented during 1995, he does not address the problem of Chicago's lack of a health diversity of political opinion (the last non-Democratic mayor was elected in 1927). The problem of Chicago's one-party rule has made it a byword for incompetence, corruption and downright criminality to this day! Secondly, while the present Bush Administration's tepid response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans has drawn much criticism, Mr. Klinenberg fails to mention the then Clinton Administration's complete and utter disregard of the events within Chicago.
But, that said, it is an interesting book, perhaps the only one on this terribly tragedy that is now almost completely forgotten.
An Excellent Candidate for Course Syllabi The only think I would add to what has been said already is that this book should be strongly considered for courses that emphasize the interaction between medicine and public health. Unlike other books written about the urban condition, this book focuses on a single public health problem and presents it from both scientific and sociodemographic perspectives. Medical and public health students alike stand much to gain by reading this book.
Heat Wave Klinenberg's investigation of the conditions and outcome of the 1995 tragedy deals with issues of human interdependence and examines the importance of local and regional communities in preventing future catastrophes of this kind. Heat Wave takes a natural phenomenon and penetrates to issues of economic and social depravity, the echelon of neighborhood that one resides and the solitude that extends from those circumstances.
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