Abigail Perkiss, author of Making Good Neighbors, reading and Q&A
After the tumultuous night of October 29, 2012, the residents of Monmouth, Ocean, and Atlantic Counties faced an enormous and pressing question: What to do? The stories captured in this book encompass their answer to that question: the clean-up efforts, the work with governmental and non-governmental aid agencies, and the fraught choices concerning rebuilding. Through a rich and varied set of oral histories that provide perspective on disaster planning, response, and recovery in New Jersey, Abigail Perkiss captures the experience of these individuals caught in between short-term preparedness initiatives that municipal and state governments undertook and the long-term planning decisions that created the conditions for catastrophic property damage.
Through these stories, Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey’s Forgotten Shore lays bare the ways that climate change and sea level rise are creating critical vulnerabilities in the most densely populated areas in the nation, illuminating the human toll of disaster and the human capacity for resilience.
"Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey's Forgotten Shore is a compelling, well-written oral history of a life-changing storm. This book gives us an intimate look at vulnerability, community, and resilience in a time of increasingly extreme weather."
-- Gordon Douglas, Director of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies at San José State University