Darkest Hours: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present

If you are already a fan of Jay Robert Nash, you will love this one. Once you read one of his books you have to read the others. It would be great if he updates Darkest Hours!

A well researched and clearly written one volume encylopedia of disasters, both man-made and natural.The time period of events commented on essentially embraces human history. The detail provided ranges from "casule comment" to extensive, depending on the individual event related, and is never less than thorough. I purchased a copy new in the late 1970's and loaned it to a friend in 1981, whence it dissapeared. I tried to replace it at that time only to find that it was out of print. I have since tried to purchase a new copy a number of times in the ensuing decades, but it has never been reissued. The book lacks currency, with no updating of information since the origional mid 1970's issue date. This is the only real problem with this work, which nevertheless remains a valuable research tool.D.M.L.

Every now and then a book comes along which can almost be said to be the last word in its field. Darkest Hours is one of those books. Nash covers worldwide disasters from ancient times to the late twentieth century, with entries that are both logical and properly placed. While many of the entries are short, Darkest Hours is no dictionary, but rather a true encylopedia. Nash includes a complete historical depiction of each tragedy, and usually good character descriptions as well. He takes us to the city of St.Pierre as it is about to be obliterated by Mt. Pelee. We find ourselves in Japan during history's worst tidal wave. The murder and mayhem of the Coconut Grove Nightclub Fire comes alive. Nash's writing does get to be rather gory at times, but those offended by this are not likely to be reading his book in the first place. In the end there are only two drawbacks to this book. First of all, it is so good that others wanting to do something similar may just give up trying. Secondly, the book has not been updated in twenty-five years. For most publications, this would call for a new edition. Here, it demands it.

I found this book to be quite fascinating. I found it to be easy to use. Most of the entries are short and to the point. There are longer, more involved entries such as the sinking of the Titanic and the Iroquois Theater fire. Unfortunatly, there was never a second edition published of the book that would have more recent disasters.