“What has most distinguished American responses to destruction over the past three centuries or so is a widespread conviction, born of beliefs and experience, that calamities are instruments of progress. In place of stoic resolve, many Americans (and certainly dominant American ideologies) embrace disasters as a means of escaping from the present into a better future.”

Kevin Rozario is associate professor in the American Studies program at Smith College.
Also see Rozario’s recent article on the Haitian earthquake for the Wall Street Journal or read an excerpt from The Culture of Calamity.