Confrontations with the plague in eighteenth-century France / Daniel Gordon -- Defoe and disasters / G.A. Starr -- Safety and reconstruction of Noto after the Sicilian earthquake of 1693--the eighteenth-century context / Stephen Tobriner -- Hunger in the garden of plenty : the Bengal famine of 1770 / David Arnold -- Shaking the unstable empire : the Lima, Quito, and Arequipa earthquakes, 1746, 1783, and 1797 / Charles F. Walker -- "The hungry year" : 1789 on the northern border of revolutionary America / Alan Taylor
Summary
This volume offers an historical perspective on the cultural impact of disasters, examining 18th-century responses to the natural catastrophes that challenged the period's claim to reason and mastery of the environment
