Book Review: Emergency Management

​CRC Press; crcpress.com.; 316 pages; $69.95.​

In today’s post-9/11 world where collaboration between the private and public sectors is strongly encouraged, Alessandra Jerolleman and John Kiefer illustrate how the two sectors can work together in their book, The Private Sector’s Role in Disasters: Leveraging the Private Sector in Emergency Management. The book presents solid information from 14 researchers and scholars involved with various aspects of the emergency management process.

Offering an array of emergency management topics and examples of collaborative efforts between the public and private sectors in the United States, the book emphasizes the increasing role of the private sector. Among the subjects examined are historical overviews of natural disasters, funding of disaster relief, and interactions among local, state, and federal governments with the private, nonprofit, and not-for-profit sectors.

The book is well organized. Within its 10 chapters, the authors provide excellent support and documentation for all of the concepts covered, as well as easy-to-understand case studies, tables, charts, and graphs. Impressively, the authors provide the content without inundating the reader with technical or governmental jargon. The content is also well cited, allowing the reader to conduct additional research from the various sources.

Written at an appropriate level for both industry professionals and college students, both groups will find the book useful and insightful. The professional will benefit from the discussion of private sector efforts to mitigate and address disasters. Detailed information can help industry professionals with work-related tasks, as well as serve as a potential source of information for the Certified Protection Professional (CPP) exam. 

The book is not a source for industry professionals seeking government contracts for disaster relief services or responses to international governmental policies or practices. Instead, it offers a blueprint to improve the response to disasters for the private sector. This textbook would be a solid supplemental reading for security, safety, or health leadership classes pertaining to emergency responses and/or disaster management. 

The Private Sector’s Role in Disasters: Leveraging the Private Sector in Emergency Management will make a fine addition to the professional or academic library and can be used as a solid source of information for both training and education. 

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Reviewer: Joseph Jaksa, Ph.D., CPP, is an associate professor of criminal justice at Michigan’s Saginaw Valley State University. He is a member of ASIS International and the Saginaw Valley Chapter of ASIS.