Includes index

Foreword -- Disasters since the dawn of time -- Death of the dinosaurs -- The Mediterranean vanishes -- Indelible imprint of the Ice Age -- Noah's flood -- The making of the Sahara -- Thera: great destroyer -- The plague of Athens -- The burning of Rome -- The wrath of Vesuvius -- Earthquake at Alexandria -- Killer quake at Antioch -- Great pestilence in Constantinople -- Famine in Egypt -- Drought in the American Southwest -- Tragedy on a global scale -- The Black Death -- Mysterious sweating sickness -- Smallpox in Mexico -- London's great plague -- The great fire of London -- Mount Etna erupts -- again -- Windstorm in Britain -- The Lisbon earthquake -- Eruption in the land of ice and fire -- Yellow fever in Saint-Domingue -- Forgotten quake at New Madrid -- The year without a summer -- Cholera sweeps the world -- Famine in Ireland -- Fires in Wisconsin -- The great Chicago fire -- The year of the locusts -- Famine in China -- Krakatoa erupts -- The blizzard of '88 -- The Johnstown flood -- Tsunami terror ini Japan -- The plague comes to the Americas -- Age-old perils in a modern world -- Galveston's killer hurricane -- Sleeping sickness invades Uganda -- Mount Pelee: grim reaper -- The Frank slide -- The San Francisco earthquake -- Mysterious fireball blasts Siberia -- Earthquake at Messina -- The big blowup in the Northwest -- Death of the Titanic -- Influenza strikes worldwide -- The great Kanto earthquake -- Old Man River on the loose -- Drought and despair in mid-America -- The New England hurricane -- Giant earthquake shatters Chile -- Bomber blitzes Empire State Building -- Killer from the deep -- Risk and survival on our violent planet -- Winter of terror -- London's deadly fog -- The night the North Sea overflowed -- New Zealand's Christmas Eve horror -- Tragedy on the Andrea Doria -- Vera: Japan's super typhoon -- The Good Friday earthquake -- Flood in Florence -- Monster wave in East Pakistan -- A demon named Agnes -- Death in Managua. Terror by twister -- Australia's Christmas cyclone -- The great Tangshan earthquake -- The fury of Mount St. Helens -- Killer heat wave -- Agony in the Mezzogiorno -- The plane that fell from the sky -- Inferno in Australia -- Famine in Africa -- Earthquake in Mexico City -- The wrath of Nevado del Ruiz -- Monster in Lake Nyos -- Horror in Armenia -- The future of the earth -- Catalogue of catastrophes.

Covers famous examples of earthquakes, avalanches, blizzards, floods, epidemics, windstorms, tidal waves, freak accidents, fires, locust plagues, landslides, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, famines, fogs, volcanoes, etc.