THE LATE FRED ROGERS, BELOVED AND GENTLE HOST OF PBS' Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for over 30 years, once said: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'" Helpers and heroes shine brightest in darkness. Disaster Heroes recounts the stories of ordinary men, women, and children who have done extraordinary things to help respond, rebuild, and recover from catastrophes around the world. Did you know it was an American from Pennsylvania who ultimately saved the lives of 33 Chilean miners in 2010? Or that the state of Louisiana donated a fire truck, the Spirit of Louisiana, to FDNY following 9/11, all because of a spur-of-the-moment outburst from one Louisiana man? Or that a landscaper from Florida helped save thousands of lives after the 2010 Haiti earthquake? Former journalist Suzanne Bernier, now an award-winning crisis management consultant, instructor and speaker, was first inspired to write Disaster Heroes while participating in her first New Orleans volunteer rebuilding effort following Hurricane Katrina. After hearing so many inspirational stories of help, hope, and healing, she decided to find and profile everyday heroes involved in responding to some of the world's most significant recent disasters. These stories shine a light on everyday heroes who led and inspired others following disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Chilean mine collapse, the Haiti earthquake, and the Japan tsunami. Many of these stories cross cultures, countries, and continents, highlighting the fact that there are no borders when it comes to helping others. We're all in this together. Regardless of our background, where we're from, or what we do for a living, these inspiring stories remind us that there's a hero in each of us.

Images of war and its commemoration are an everyday presence in contemporary culture, from the embedded reporter in the field to the Last Post at the Menin Gate. Disasters and Heroes: On War, Memory and Representation revisits campaigns from the plains of Troy to recent events in the Balkans, examining how wars are represented and remembered. Angus Calder shows how the 'facts'of war are transformed into myths that condition later responses to war, and how the construction of memory begins with wartime events themselves. Beginning with a section devoted to war memorials and the public remembrance of war, such as D-Day commemorations, the essays collected in Disasters and Heroes then look at the lived experience of war for 'ordinary' people, while the final section deals with literary representation of war, from The Iliad to T.E. Lawrence and on to Christa Wolf's Cassandra. Disasters and Heroes is a thought-provoking collection dealing with issues of major significance which recent events have made painfully topical.

Diana Prince (Wonder Woman), Bruce Wayne (Batman), and Clark Kent (Superman) take a field trip to the 31st century in this newest Secret Hero Society adventure! The first EVER Secret Hero Society volume narrated by Diana Prince (Wonder Woman)!When a foreign exchange student arrives at Justice Prep, Diana is excited to greet her! While Clark (Superman) is also curious to meet this shy student, Bruce (Batman) is wary. Bruce's suspicions are warranted when they are unable to find any record that this student even exists. When the three confront her, an accident transports them all the way to the 31st century! Now Diana, Clark, and Bruce get to meet the heroes of tomorrow... the Legion of Super Students!Our displaced time-traveling heroes will struggle to grasp future technology, homework assignments, and most importantly -- bullies. Especially one in particular who has a plan to go back in time and change the course of history! It's up to Clark, Diana, and Bruce to stop this villainous plan before it happens, and find their way back home in this newest Secret Hero Society adventure!

A haunting chronicle of what endures when the world we know is swept away On a day like any other, on a rafting trip down Utah’s Green River, Stéphane Gerson’s eight-year-old son, Owen, drowned in a spot known as Disaster Falls. That night, as darkness fell, Stéphane huddled in a tent with his wife, Alison, and their older son, Julian, trying to understand what seemed inconceivable. “It’s just the three of us now,” Alison said over the sounds of a light rain and, nearby, the rushing river. “We cannot do it alone. We have to stick together.” Disaster Falls chronicles the aftermath of that day and their shared determination to stay true to Alison’s resolution. At the heart of the book is an unflinching portrait of a marriage tested. Husband and wife grieve in radically different ways that threaten to isolate each of them in their post-Owen worlds. (“He feels so far,” Stéphane says when Alison shows him a selfie Owen had taken. “He feels so close,” she says.) With beautiful specificity, Stéphane shows how they resist that isolation and reconfigure their marriage from within. As Stéphane navigates his grief, the memoir expands to explore how society reacts to the death of a child. He depicts the “good death” of his father, which reveals an altogther different perspective on mortality. He excavates the history of the Green River—rife with hazards not mentioned in the rafting company’s brochures. He explores how stories can both memorialize and obscure a person’s life—and how they can rescue us. Disaster Falls is a powerful account of a life cleaved in two—raw, truthful, and unexpectedly consoling.

“Reads like a nail-biting thriller.” — Library Journal,starred review A gripping new history celebrating the remarkable heroes of the Johnstown Flood—the deadliest flood in U.S. history—from NBC host and legendary weather authority Al Roker Central Pennsylvania, May 31, 1889: After a deluge of rain—nearly a foot in less than twenty-four hours—swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork dam, built to create a private lake for a fishing and hunting club that counted among its members Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie. Though the engineers telegraphed neighboring towns on this last morning in May warning of the impending danger, residents—factory workers and their families—remained in their homes, having grown used to false alarms. At 3:10 P.M., the dam gave way, releasing 20 million tons of water. Gathering speed as it flowed southwest, the deluge wiped out nearly everything in its path and picked up debris—trees, houses, animals—before reaching Johnstown, a vibrant steel town fourteen miles downstream. Traveling 40 miles an hour, with swells as high as 60 feet, the deadly floodwaters razed the mill town—home to 20,000 people—in minutes. The Great Flood, as it would come to be called, remains the deadliest in US history, killing more than 2,200 people and causing $17 million in damage. In Ruthless Tide, Al Roker follows an unforgettable cast of characters whose fates converged because of that tragic day, including John Parke, the engineer whose heroic efforts failed to save the dam; the robber barons whose fancy sport fishing resort was responsible for modifications that weakened the dam; and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, who spent five months in Johnstown leading one of the first organized disaster relief efforts in the United States. Weaving together their stories and those of many ordinary citizens whose lives were forever altered by the event, Ruthless Tide is testament to the power of the human spirit in times of tragedy and also a timely warning about the dangers of greed, inequality, neglected infrastructure, and the ferocious, uncontrollable power of nature.

"Eight stories of man-made disasters and the heroes who arose to rescue others as well as institute reforms that would avoid similar disasters later"--