There Are No Accidents
eBook - ePub

There Are No Accidents

The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits and Who Pays the Price

  1. 320 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

There Are No Accidents

The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits and Who Pays the Price

About this book

A journalist recounts the surprising history of accidents and reveals how they’ve come to define all that’s wrong with America.

We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term “accident” itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.

As the rate of accidental death skyrockets in America, the poor and people of color end up bearing the brunt of the violence and blame, while the powerful use the excuse of the “accident” to avoid consequences for their actions. Born of the death of her best friend, and the killer who insisted it was an accident, this book is a moving investigation of the sort of tragedies that are all too common, and all too commonly ignored.

In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.

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Yes, you can access There Are No Accidents by Jessie Singer in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Public Health, Administration & Care. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Introduction: Not an Accident
  6. Chapter One: Error
  7. Chapter Two: Conditions
  8. Chapter Three: Scale
  9. Chapter Four: Risk
  10. Chapter Five: Stigma
  11. Chapter Six: Racism
  12. Chapter Seven: Money
  13. Chapter Eight: Blame
  14. Chapter Nine: Prevention
  15. Chapter Ten: Accountability
  16. Conclusion: Accident
  17. Acknowledgments
  18. About the Author
  19. Notes
  20. Index
  21. Copyright