Throughout history, varying responses to catastrophe have revealed much about a society's cultural and philosophical character. In "Dreadful Visitations, " leading scholars of different disciplines examine eighteenth-century responses to natural disaster, showing how human agency played an active role in the creation of destructive circumstances, and how these disasters helped to establish national and moral identities in the Age of Reason.

Contributors: David Arnold, Daniel Gordon, Carla Hesse, George Starr, Alan Taylor, Steven Tobriner and Charles Walker.