Preparing for the worst (review of The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters by Perrow, C.; 2007) [books]

This book is written by Charles Perrow, professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University. Perrow's earlier book, Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies, was originally published in 1984. In it he argued that most major industrial accidents could be traced not to simple operator error but to the vulnerabilities of what he called complex, highly coupled systems, where each part depended on many others. Now in this book Perrow argues that the United States abounds in complex systems teetering on the edge of disaster, and he wonders what might happen if terrorists were to put their thumbs on the scale. Perrow cites numerous examples of our vulnerabilities and calls for sweeping changes in our infrastructure to reduce the impact of future disasters.