The worst of times

It seems almost obscene to discuss the 8000 deaths in the Bhopal chemical
factory disaster in 1984 as a cultural artefact. But Decade of Disaster, Ann
Larabee’s study of the fallout from great disasters of the 1980s, including
Chernobyl, AIDS and the Exxon Valdez, does show how the world appropriates
one-off disasters into wider dramas such as the cold war. Published by the
University of Illinois Press, £15, ISBN 0252068203.