The Gladney's family life is disrupted and threatened when an industrial accident sends a lethal cloud over their community. Jack Gladney struggles with the ensuing complications which include murder.

Charles Perrow is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His other books include The Radical Attack on Business, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, and The AIDS Disaster: The Failure of Organizations in New York and the Nation. Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more...

"Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like roaring surf, one of them said later. Like a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence, said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window. "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed...

Colton knew there were a hundred ways to die in Wyoming. That's why he figured there was only one way to live--with all his heart. When Alexandra Fuller set out to write about the oil rigs on Wyoming's high plains, she was expecting the fierce weather and the roughnecks, the big skies and the industry men, but she wasn't expecting to encounter a real-life cowboy. Then Colton H. Bryant happened into her story, a soulful boy with a mustang-taming heart...

"The late nineteenth and early twentieth century U.S. economy maimed and killed employees at an astronomically high rate, while the legal system left the injured and their loved ones with little recourse. In the 1910s, U.S. states enacted workers' compensation laws, which required employers to pay a portion of the financial costs of workplace injuries. This book uses a range of archival materials, interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, and compelling...

This dazzling and sublimely funny debut follows three unforgettable characters--a widow, a factory worker who bites pencils for a living, and a teenage punk--fighting back after life kicks them in the teeth. Esther, Frankie, and Ruth live in a small Ohio town anchored by the thriving Juliet Pencils factory. After a freak accident at the plant, these women have to re-create their lives using the only tools they've got: wits, molars, and a new pair...