Controlling The Disaster Narrative

At Town Hall tonight, Gregory Button will read from his new book, Disaster Culture. It explains “how corporations, state agencies, social advocacy organizations, and other actors attempt to control disaster narratives, including the Exxon-Valdez oil spill and BP’s Gulf disaster.” We all know that the publishing industry moves at a glacial pace, and I can tell you that readings are almost always planned way, way in advance. So it’s entirely a result of chance that Button is coming to town after the recent events in Japan, but I think he’ll probably have quite a bit to say tonight about the earthquake and nuclear disasters of the past month.

This is an opportunity to access the brain of a human who has spent a very long time thinking about a subject—an “expert” in the truest sense of the word, not in a vague, TV-talking-head sense—that is unfolding in the news every day.

Information about other readings going on tonight—a book about a local basketball team, a parenting blogger, and Alexander McCall Smith are a few of the notable events—can be found in the reading calendar.