Christine Cornea and Rhys Owain Thomas, eds, Dramatising Disaster: Character, Event, Representation. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013. 172pp. US$67.99 (hbk).Jennifer WoodwardCornea and Thomas's Dramatising Disaster: Character, Event, Representation examines depictions of disaster in visual media to provide a detailed critical treatment of the subject. Acknowledging the various connotations of 'disaster' in the introduction, the collection embraces the term's diverse implications and distinguishes itself from more focused studies of the topic. Offering as broad a definition of 'disaster' as possible, Cornea and Thomas avoid becoming tied up in taxonomic debate. The introduction emphasises that the text looks 'not upon a specific disaster or a specific disaster context, but upon the wider topic of disaster ... [and] is therefore able to offer a broad account of disaster across genre and media' (4-5). The collection's importance, therefore, lies in its ambition to draw scholarly attention to the way the media represents disaster, its figurative and metaphorical strategies, and its historical and cultural contexts. Embracing a diversity of disaster narratives and the interdisciplinarity of media studies, Dramatising Disaster is a significant contribution to the field. As with any collected volume, the analytical methodologies are varied and the critical contexts distinct; the approaches to the genre can, in places, seem disconnected. However, the text is well organised, and the editors have taken care to contextualise the content, providing a short introduction to each of the main sections in addition to the volume's overall introduction.The book's scope is reflected in its structure. Organised into three parts, it engages with 'disaster' in increasingly broad terms. 'Part I: Personal Identity, Trauma and Disaster' examines personalised disaster in film and television. 'Part II: Representing the Aftermath: New York and New Orleans' considers evocations of urban disaster and the way the two cities have been portrayed in film, video games, comics and television. 'Part III: End Times: The Politics of Disaster' engages with depictions of global cataclysm. Here film, television and pseudo-documentary are discussed in relation to contemporary anxieties. The volume's increasingly broad trajectory, which moves from personalised renderings of disaster to more extensive globalised depictions, means that it simultaneously moves towards (structurally) and beyond (conceptually) traditional notions of secular eschatology.The contributions contained within Part I of Dramatising Disaster approach the subject matter in distinct ways. The opening essay, 'Diagnosis Disaster', takes as its focus the impact of cancer on the lives of women and their families in Stepmom (Columbus US 1998) and The Family Stone (Bezucha US 2005). Interrogating gender representations, Liz Powell argues that in these films cancer is the catalyst for masculine heroics and feminine suffering and sacrifice. The chapter offers the most personalised analysis of disaster in the book and for some readers may stretch their understanding of what a 'disaster narrative' encompasses. Indeed, possibly reflecting a little insecurity about the diverse manner in which the term is being applied, the introduction to Part I reminds readers that 'disaster' can affect an individual or a whole society (8). Reinforcing this point, Powell offers engaging, informative and insightful analysis to argue convincingly that cancer is often constructed as cultural disaster.Chapter Two, Rob Bullard's 'Trauma and Technological Accident in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter', offers astute analysis to present the case for a connection between technology and trauma in Egoyan's film (Canada 1997). Linking trauma theory and visual culture, Bullard presents a sparkling reading of the film that shows how an accident can exist as disaster for both individual and community. …