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How two French families made—and lost—their fortunes in the brutal plantation culture of pre-revolutionary Haiti. In 1729, Marc-Antoine Lamerenx, a minor French nobleman, set sail for Saint-Domingue. Twenty years later, peasant Jean Mouscardy also made the long and difficult journey to Saint-Domingue. Although the men were not related and had little in common, they hailed from the same Pyrenean town, La Bastide Clairence. In the New World, they both settled in Saint-Martin-du-Dondon, where they made their fortunes growing coffee. After the Haitian slave revolt uprooted them, some of their descendants stayed in Haiti and took part in building the new nation. Others took refuge in France, started businesses in New Orleans, or transferred their slaves and their Haitian experience to new coffee plantations in Cuba. Wealth and Disaster follows the emigrant Lamerenx and Mouscardy families over three generations and various locations across the Caribbean. Pierre Force traces their white and mixed-race descendants from the early-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries and over decades of comings and goings between their French ancestral town and Saint-Domingue, Cuba, and New Orleans. A chance encounter in a French archive led Force to uncover an epic saga, a fascinating and character-driven story of pirates, revolution, staggering riches, financial ruination, natural disaster, harsh imprisonment, and the rise and fall of the plantation economy. By observing the circulation of a few individuals between the Pyrenees and the Caribbean, Force is able to show how these two worlds became interconnected. Arguing that who emigrated and how depended on one’s position in the Pyrenean house-based system, Force also reveals how capital accumulation in Saint-Domingue relied on Pyrenean networks and how, in turn, wealth acquired in America changed the rules of the game back home. An exciting and accessible history, Wealth and Disaster offers riveting insight into the matrimonial strategies and inheritance customs of French rural society and the resulting choices to emigrate or to stay.

In the tradition of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, a leading geoscientist argues that natural disasters too often push the modern world towards more extremes of inequality

An intriguing look at how past market wisdom can help you survive and thrive during uncertain times In Wealth, War & Wisdom, legendary Wall Street investor Barton Biggs reveals how the turning points of World War II intersected with market performance, and shows how these lessons can help the twenty-first-century investor comprehend our own perilous times as well as choose the best strategies for the modern market economy. Through these pages, Biggs skillfully discusses the performance of equities in both victorious and defeated countries, examines how individuals preserved their wealth despite the ongoing battles, and explores whether or not public equities were able to increase in value and serve as a wealth preserver. Biggs also looks at how other assets, including real estate and gold, fared during this dynamic and devastating period, and offers valuable insights on preserving one's wealth for future generations. With clear, concise prose, Biggs Reveals how the investment insights of truly trying times can be profitably applied to modern day investment endeavors Follows the performance of global markets against the backdrop of World War II Offers many relevant lessons-about life, politics, financial markets, wealth, and survival-that can help you thrive in the face of adversity Wealth, War & Wisdom contains essential insights that will help you navigate modern financial markets during the uncertain times that will increasingly define this new century.

Great natural disasters are rare, but their aftermath can change the fortunes of a city or region forever. This book and its companion Policy Focus Report identify lessons from different parts of the world to help communities and government leaders better organize for recovery after future disasters. The authors consider the processes and outcomes of community recovery and reconstruction following major disasters in six countries: China, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Post-disaster reconstruction offers opportunities to improve construction and design standards, renew infrastructure, create new land use arrangements, reinvent economies, and improve governance. If done well, reconstruction can help break the cycle of disaster-related impacts and losses, and improve the resilience of a city or region.

The term 'natural disaster' is often used to refer to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. However, the phrase 'natural disaster' suggests an uncritical acceptance of a deeply engrained ideological and cultural myth. At Risk questions this myth and argues that extreme natural events are not disasters until a vulnerable group of people is exposed. The updated new edition confronts a further ten years of ever more expensive and deadly disasters and discusses disaster not as an aberration, but as a signal failure of mainstream 'development'. Two analytical models are provided as tools for understanding vulnerability. One links remote and distant 'root causes' to 'unsafe conditions' in a 'progression of vulnerability'. The other uses the concepts of 'access' and 'livelihood' to understand why some households are more vulnerable than others. Examining key natural events and incorporating strategies to create a safer world, this revised edition is an important resource for those involved in the fields of environment and development studies.

The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

Generation Disaster: Coming of Age Post-9/11 focuses on the numerous stressors that have had an impact on today's emerging adults including climate change, school shootings, economic recession, and of course, the national trauma of 9/11. Disaster mental health expert Karla Vermeulen draws on a combination of statistics, academic sources, and her own original research, including results from a nationally representative survey, to examine these challenges as they are experienced by emerging adults who continue to fight for their future. The result is a corrective to previous works that dismiss "kids today" as fragile or entitled, and instead emphasizes the generation's strength in the face of unprecedented uncertainties and obstacles.