Introduction: The Golden Age as catastrophe -- The people of calamity : catastrophic optimism in early America -- Interlude: The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 -- What comes down must go up : disasters and the making of American capitalism -- "That enchanted morning" : or, How Americans learned to love disasters -- The modern way of disaster : the nuclear age and the origins of federal emergency management -- The ends of disaster : the culture of calamity in the age of terror -- Epilogue: A reckoning : Hurricane Katrina and the "murder" of New Orleans.