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The Geography of Risk
- Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America's Coasts
- Narrated by: Gilbert M. Gaul, Matt Godfrey
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's summary
This program includes an introduction and epilogue read by the author.
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in US history - but who bears the brunt of these monster storms?
Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert M. Gaul reveals in The Geography of Risk to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk.
These federal incentives, Gaul argues, have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. We have become responsible for a shocking array of coastal amenities: new roads, bridges, buildings, streetlights, tennis courts, marinas, gazebos, and even spoiled food after hurricanes. The Geography of Risk will forever change the way you think about the coasts, from the clash between economic interests and nature, to the heated politics of regulators and developers.
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By: Martin Doyle
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A Furious Sky
- The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes
- By: Eric Jay Dolin
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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With A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed at least 6,000 people, the highest toll of any natural disaster in American history.
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Good start but went political at the end.
- By thebreeze on 03-24-21
By: Eric Jay Dolin
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The Gulf
- The Making of an American Sea
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
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Decolonize gulf history
- By Jesse Carr on 05-02-18
By: Jack E. Davis
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The Last Fish Tale
- The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester
- By: Mark Kurlansky
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Fishing at sea, an ancient trade and a way of life that has defined coastal towns throughout history, may be coming to an end. The culture and traditions of coastal Britain and of seagoing nations everywhere are now threatened with extinction. Celebrated author Mark Kurlansky explores the fate of our oceans and the decline of our most ancient coastal enterprise.
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Love me some Kurlansky!
- By Eric Walden on 09-08-15
By: Mark Kurlansky
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Sun, Sin, Suburbia
- The History of Modern Las Vegas Revised and Expanded
- By: Geoff Schumacher
- Narrated by: Douglas R. Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Las Vegas is gambling's mecca - Sin City the Entertainment Capital of the World with 40 million visitors a year. But that's just part of the story. This carefully documented history tracks the rise of Las Vegas from its vital role in World War II, of the Rat Pack era of the 50s, the explosive growth of the 90s, and it's colossal collapse in the post 2008 real-estate crash. It offers a history of the iconic Strip, but also profiles the neighborhoods where over 2 million people live.
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Good History of Vegas - old, modern and mundane
- By Amazon Customer on 06-13-14
By: Geoff Schumacher
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The Swamp
- The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise
- By: Michael Grunwald
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The Everglades was America's last frontier, a wild country long after the West was won. In this book Michael Grunwald chronicles how a series of visionaries tried to drain and "reclaim" it and how Mother Nature refused to bend to their will; in the most harrowing tale, a 1928 hurricane drowned 2,500 people in the Everglades. But the Army Corps of Engineers finally tamed the beast with levees and canals, converting half the Everglades into sprawling suburbs and sugar plantations.
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This is not Jiminy Cricket's river
- By Robert R. on 09-02-18
By: Michael Grunwald
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Living in the Long Emergency
- Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward
- By: James Howard Kunstler
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century - the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now - surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.
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Please Read Before Buying
- By K. Skoog on 05-12-20
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Green Metropolis
- What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability
- By: David Owen
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.
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A stupid and dangerously short sighted view
- By Gare&Sophia on 11-13-12
By: David Owen
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Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
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Missing some important angles
- By D. Zimmerle on 08-19-21
By: Alec MacGillis
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The End of Ice
- Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
- By: Dahr Jamail
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis - from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest - in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.
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Dealing with the Ultimate Climate Change Question
- By red_dog on 02-03-19
By: Dahr Jamail
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Last Train to Paradise
- Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: Del Roy
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The paths of the great American robber barons were paved with riches, and though ordinary citizens paid for them, they also profited. Les Standiford, author of the John Deal thrillers, tells how the man who turned Florida's swamps into the playgrounds of the rich performed the almost superhuman feat of building a railroad from the mainland to Key West at the turn of the century.
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A Pleasant Surprise
- By Roy on 04-05-09
By: Les Standiford
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The Road Taken
- The History and Future of America's Infrastructure
- By: Henry Petroski
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers has, in its latest report, given American roads and bridges a grade of D and C+, respectively, and has described roughly 65,000 bridges in the United States as 'structurally deficient'. This crisis - and one need look no further than the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota to see that it is indeed a crisis - shows little sign of abating short of a massive change in attitude amongst politicians and the American public.
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Well put
- By Lawrence on 08-10-17
By: Henry Petroski
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Colossus
- Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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As breathtaking today as when it was completed, Hoover Dam ranks among America's greatest achievements. The story of its conception, design, and construction is the story of the United States at a unique moment in history: when facing both a global economic crisis and the implacable elements of nature, we prevailed.
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A Political Biography of the Dam
- By Roy on 02-20-11
By: Michael Hiltzik
What listeners say about The Geography of Risk
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cameron Patel
- 02-03-20
Quick read... Surprising
Hope there is more to come! Found this book interesting because so many of the questions raised I asked myself over the years. Just makes you wonder how many years will it take for folks to realize development need to prepare for the changes that are the new norm.
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- Mari D. Shelby
- 02-12-20
Every Tax Paying American Pays for The Rich To Own Investment Property on The Eastern Seaboard
This book will blow your mind. The cycle of rebuilding over and over again at the cost of every tax payer in America. Those who want property in known paths of destruction should bare the risk. Read the tea leaves, the number of devastating storms are increasing. This is where the Federal Government needs to step in and say “no more federal funds for secondary homes”, and if you have made one FEMA claim on a property, you can’t make another for 10 years. This is socialism and both parties are complicit. Excellent read!
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- Veronique C.
- 10-26-19
An urgent must read
A must read for all who own real estate on coasts, contemplate building or are still questioning the risks of living by the sea.
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1 person found this helpful
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- A.
- 10-17-20
A must read for every floodplain manager.
everyone interested in environmental protection should read this book. Many interesting interviews with the local and state managers that have a stake in sustainability.
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- Jessica
- 10-24-19
Interesting and Insightful
The information in this book is so interesting and so insightful into the long history of poor decision making by regular humans just wanting to live and thrive near the water. Some of the information was repetitive, but at the end I realized that it was because our coastal history is so repetitive. Build. Disaster. Rebuild. I recommend this to anyone interested in the history and future of our country.
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- wil arguedas
- 01-19-23
Informative !
Well researched and presented . A recipe for climate policy in the future .
Everyone should listen to this book
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- J. Dusheck
- 07-20-20
Like the family history by you father’s uncle
This book is inexplicably tedious. Way too much detail without it being clear what the story is.
The narrator is working hard to inject something compelling into a list of real estate transactions and dull personal anecdotes. But he is just making me more aware if how dull the book is.
Hoping the water section is more compelling.
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