# Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History

**Author:** Allen Godbey
**Tags:** 
**Price:** Free
**Formats:** DOCX, EPUB, FB2, PDF, TXT
**Downloads:** 20
**Added:** 10.07.2026
**URL:** https://samolit.com/books/95945

## Description

Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History, first published in 1890, is A. H. Godbey's sweeping compendium of the catastrophes that have struck humanity on land and sea. The book opens with the author's conviction that "a large proportion of the calamities reported from day to day are directly due to the haste, greed, and heedlessness of man himself," while another category "due solely to meteorological or geological conditions" surpasses all others in scale and destruction. Rather than dwelling on superstition, Godbey sets out to explain the natural laws behind such events, and the volume's own title page promises coverage "embracing the Louisville tornado, floods in the South, Charleston earthquake, Johnstown flood, storm on the coast of Samoa, noted shipwrecks, great floods in China, Holland and Japan, and other notable disasters caused by storm, flood and volcanic action." Alongside vivid accounts of destruction, the book blends dramatic narrative with scientific explanation, chronicling heroism, suffering, and survival amid earthquakes, cyclones, famine, and pestilence. It remains a fascinating late-Victorian attempt to make sense of nature's most terrifying and destructive forces.