As this double volume set clearly shows, American history is much more than Presidential elections, momentous discoveries, and incredible inventions. It’s also about ships sinking, epidemics, riots, and the ravages of Mother Nature. While unpleasant to contemplate, these are part of the life story of the United States; there are also lessons to be learned from the mistakes our forefathers made in reacting to these events.

Editor Newton-Matza (Ph.D., The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC) and his crew of contributors have done a commendable job in outlining some of the more notable grief-stricken occurrences of our national past. There were plenty more they could have chosen from, a fact he plainly points out in his preface in which he states that “as with the creation of any list, decisions had to be made with certain criteria…the attempt here is to examine a wide variety of events and understand why we still remember them” (xiv). Therefore, the researcher may find entries regarding a cross-section of both man-made debacles (“1692 Salem Witch Trials,” “1871 Great Chicago Fire,” “1929 Great Depression Begins”) and natural phenomena (“1811–1812 New Madrid, Missouri Earthquakes,” “1927 Mississippi River Flood”). As these representative articles suggest, the arrangement is chronological. A “List of Entries” appears in both volumes for easy browsing, while an ample index will assist those who know the name of a particular event, such as the Hindenburg airship explosion but not the year or place it occurred (in this case, 1937, at Lakehurst, New Jersey). Writing style is suitable for the intended audience of high school/undergraduate college students and the lay public. This set is well illustrated with black-and-white historic photographs, engravings, etc., and sidebar articles highlight tangential issues related to main entries. For example, “Labor Strife and Legal Issues” appears within the body of text for the “1894 Pullman Strike in Chicago, Illinois”. A total of 206 entries appear within these covers; the set concludes with a selection of primary documents relating to selected disasters and a lengthy bibliography of print and electronic resources for further study.

Well researched, well written, and well documented, this set is recommended for purchase by all public and academic libraries. This reviewer hastens to add, however, that a competing recent title is on par with the ABC-CLIO volumes and could either supplant or supplement the same. Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation’s Most Catastrophic Events (Ballard C. Campbell, ed., Facts on File, 2008) contains surprisingly little overlap; while limited to one volume, the articles are more concise, so it contains about the same amount of material but on different topics. This title is likewise recommended for purchase.