Review: Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America, by James P. Kraft

Abstract

Book Review| August 01 2022 Review: Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America, by James P. Kraft James P. Kraft. Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. 256 pp. Hardcover $54.95. Mark Aldrich Mark Aldrich MARK ALDRICH is Marilyn Carlson Nelson Professor of Economics Emeritus at Smith College. He has written widely on the economics of safety, including Safety First: Technology, Labor and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939 (1997); Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety: 1828–1965 (2006); and Back on Track: American Railroad Accidents and Safety: 1965–2015 (2018). He is currently writing a book on American energy transitions, 1800–1940. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2022) 99 (3): 64–65. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2022.99.3.64 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Aldrich; Review: Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America, by James P. Kraft. California History 1 August 2022; 99 (3): 64–65. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2022.99.3.64 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search The core of James Kraft’s Havoc and Reform consists of five single-chapter studies of post–World War II disasters. There is also an introduction, an initial background chapter, and a conclusion. The disasters Kraft discusses are the Texas City explosion of 1946; the United Airlines–TWA midair collision over the Grand Canyon in 1956; the San Fernando earthquake of 1956 that leveled, among other buildings, two local hospitals; the MGM Grand fire in Las Vegas in 1980; and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. In the introduction and first chapter, Kraft introduces commonalities that link these tragedies. In the author’s view, all were workplace disasters; all occurred in modern times and in the South or Southwest, far from the older industrial regions. Finally, all had important policy consequences, because “havoc and reform…look like two strands of a single cord” (14). These claims are surely hard to... You do not currently have access to this content.