About this item
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history -- but who bears the brunt of these monster storms?Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion) , Ike ($40 billion) , Sandy ($72 billion) , Harvey ($125 billion) , and Maria ($90 billion) . With more property than ever in harm's way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won't be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert M. Gaul reveals in The Geography of Risk to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk.These federal incentives, Gaul argues, have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. We have become responsible for a shocking array of coastal amenities: new roads, bridges, buildings, streetlights, tennis courts, marinas, gazebos, and even spoiled food after hurricanes. The Geography of Risk will forever change the way you think about the coasts, from the clash between economic interests and nature, to the heated politics of regulators and developers.
About the Author
Gilbert M. Gaul (1951-) grew up in Kearny, New Jersey, and attended St. Benedict's Prep in Newark. For more than 35 years he was a reporter at the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers. In 1979, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (along with Elliot Jaspin) for investigative reporting for a series on the collapse of the Blue Coal Corporation. He won a second Pulitzer in 1990 (Public Service) for a series analyzing safety flaws in the nation's blood supply. He was also short-listed for Pulitzers in 1990, 1994, 2001 and 2007. Gaul was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, concentrating on business and economics, and was a Ferris Professor at Princeton University.
