Klinenberg has some incredibly smart stuff to say about heat waves - natural disasters that generally cost more lives than any other kind (tsunamis aside, I presume), and yet which are routinely ignored when people think about the challenge of responding to such a public health crisis. There are reasons - not of them especially good - why people don't think of heatwaves in the same way they think of earthquakes or tornadoes: they don't leave carnage behind; there are no dramatic pictures to accompany the news; and the deaths that result from heat waves often point to weaknesses in social infrastructures that most people (especially politicians) would rather ignore.

Yet, Klinenberg argues, it's precisely because heat waves point to those structural weaknesses that they are worth study - and not just in terms of raw data (who died and when; what amenities did they lack), but in terms of how there is an ecology of survival, how physical landscapes can make or unmake an individual's response to life-threatening circumstances, and how the ramifications of all these things are shouldered overwhelmingly by the poor.

I'm 100% persuaded by his argument. That said, he sums everything up in the first chapter and every chapter after that simply repeats. His statistics are impressive, but ultimately they don't add up to a compelling story, and while I think he has great things to offer the way we think about urban environments, I felt he could have said it in about half the time. I get the impression, however, that he's writing very much for an audience of other sociologists, and that the dictates of his discipline explain much of his style. In that case, I'm faulting him for not writing like a historian - not fair of me, but he still only gets two stars as a result.

Very good social autopsy but at times slow/dry.

Everybody is at fault. Eric Klinenberg is one of those nobodies that needs to feel special by exploiting the suffering of others.

Until recently I had been unaware of this tragedy--I mostly avoided the news in 1995 and the only news item I can specifically remember from that year is Jerry Garcia's death. I'm not usually a fan of sociology as I consider it a largely arm-wavey, tell-you-stuff-you-already-know discipline but it seems Klinenberg managed to synthesize the information surrounding the heat wave into a coherent narrative and convincing explanation of what happened in Chicago a mere month before Jerry's death.

I gather that the book came out of Klinenberg's graduate thesis and like a lot of academic writing, it tends to repeat itself.

What bothered me most about this book, though, was that it was written two decades ago, and nearly three since the events of the book. The landscape of Chicago and the world have changed drastically, from the real estate situation to the way information is disseminated. I found myself looking for a comparison to the current vulnerability to heat deaths--an indication that the cautionary tale has been heeded or at least that modern technology has ameliorated some of the problems.

Shortly after this heat wave had passed I flew down to visit my sister in Texas. A local there asked me, with the sort of perverse pride most of us take in the quirks of our homelands, how I liked the Texas heat. My sister replied, “She’s from Chicago”, and the expression on the Texan’s face changed instantly: “Ohhhh,” she said, with something like awe.

The thing is, though, that parts of Texas have that kind of heat and humidity every year, and they don’t end up with 700-plus bodies piled up at the morgue after one week in one city alone. So I’ve known all along that what happened that summer in Chicago went beyond the unfortunate confluence of environmental factors we encountered.

What I didn’t know until very recently is that there are people who lived through it and somehow believe the death toll was essentially made up, or that the city government went to such lengths to instill that doubt.

Klinenberg does an excellent job of looking at the societal failures that led to these deaths; the role of neoliberal ‘reforms’ that made city government view its residents as consumers, all equally able to choose their own fate, rather than citizens to whom the elected government has some kind of responsibility; and the way that media norms worked to absolve the government of its failures even as many journalists tried to raise awareness.

A well argued analysis of an event that should be remembered alongside the Great Chicago Fire, the Eastland Disaster and the Our Lady of the Angels school fire as one of Chicago’s great tragedies ... but probably won’t be.

Terrific. I spend most of my life thinking about children and youth. His exploration of the myriad factors that caused so many elderly people to die (alone) in the 1995 Chicago heat wave taught me a lot.

The weak points of any system become more evident as stress increases. Recounted is what happened when a disastrous heat wave hit Chicago in 1995. "Areas for improvement" that were revealed in Chicago apply to the nation as a whole.

This book was recommended to me by a professor, and while I enjoyed it, it definitely read as more of a class book and less like a book just for enjoyment.

The book focused a lot on the large scale conclusions and situations, which is interesting but can be a bit confusing if you're not super familiar with Chicago. I think I was expecting this book to read a bit more like Matthew Desmond's "Evicted" where the individuals are the driving force, and it definitely was not written that way.

For those with an interest in the topic or in environmental impacts on individuals I would recommend, but I'm not sure if the casual reader would enjoy.

Read for my Urban Disasters course - Interesting perspective on all the aspects that went wrong during the deadly heat wave in Chicago in 1995. Of particular interest, the chapter comparing the two neighborhoods and how each fared differently! Worth a read...

Def outdated (published 2000) but still an important sociological text!! Glad i finally read

Stunning, insightful, and shows how the reaches of government have so much potential to do right, and can fail their residents so brutally, both in normal times and under extraordinary circumstances. Unpacks the communication strategies of politicians in powerful ways, as well as showing the biases of the media. Most importantly, it shows the importance of institutions equitably investing in neighborhoods and the importance of building community.

without a doubt the best book about a heat wave i've ever read.

no but seriously folks, a sociologist's take on the perfect storm-heat wave that killed over 750 people, mostly minorities and the elderly, and how the city's public safety and health failures combined with changing urban demographics, public policy, and even journalism to allow and hide HOW THIS HAPPENED in 1995.

i think the book was written in 2000, it would be interesting to see a rewrite/new intro considering the big freak weather events since then.