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Essay on Heat Wave by Eric Klinenberg (Book Review)
Almost 7 years ago, the people of Chicago awoke to a day that would see temperatures sore to 106 Farenheit--the heat index peaked at 126 Farenheit. The unabated heat wave endured for 6 more days. At the week's end, streets had buckled, power grids had failed from the increased demand for air conditioning, and train rails had detached from their moorings. More than 700 people died as a direct result of the heat. This is more than twice the number that died in the great Chicago Fire of 1871 and 20 times the number that perished in Florida and Louisiana during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Heat waves kill more people in a typical year than all other natural disasters combined, yet heat-related deaths seem to go unnoticed. Klinenberg considers why this is so as he examines how the decaying social framework of Chicago contributed to the disaster.
Faced with over 700 heat-induced deaths in one hot summer week in Chicago in July of 1995, Heat Wave, by Eric Klinenberg, takes on the sociologically grisly act of asking how and why. This masterful study of the intersection of the political and the ecological reveals just how important it is that sociologists look not just at trends or patterns over time, but at specific events.
Klinenberg devotes individual chapters to separate organs of this social body of the city of Chicago: chapters on urban housing and on specific neighborhoods in Chicago (neighborhoods with similar economic characteristics and diverse trajectories through the crisis); chapters on the city government under Mayor Richard M. Daley and on its social service agencies; a chapter on the media response to and characterization of the crisis. A pervasive theme is discerned -- the American cult of individualism turns out to have deadly consequences for the elderly and the poor in an emergency....
