Un paraíso en el infierno

After a disaster, whether caused by man or nature, do people become more altruistic, resourceful, and courageous? What makes new communities and new purposes emerging from ruins and crises so happy? And what does this joy reveal about normally unsatisfied social desires and possibilities? Solnit explores this phenomenon, observing major calamities such as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1917 explosion that destroyed Halifax, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11 in New York, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The most surprising thing about disasters is not that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy.