Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic
Events. By Thomas A. Birkland. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2006. 240p. $44.95 cloth, $26.95
paper.
Lessons of Disaster is a natural follow-up to the
author's previous book, After Disaster (1997),
which examined the extent to which disasters and accidents influence
policy agendas within relevant domains. Lessons of
Disaster is built on this previous work but focuses
specifically on whether or not disasters, as focusing events, induce
policy learning. The author differentiates between simple policy
change and actual policy learning by defining learning as a process
by which policy actors incorporate new information and insights
revealed by a disaster and purposefully apply it to the design of
more appropriate or effective policies.