About
Amanda Ripley, a longtime TIME Magazine contributor, has traveled the world studying disasters, natural and manmade. Her book, , is the first major book to explain how the brain works in disasters — and how we can learn to do better.
Amanda is a literary pragmatist. In her book and in her work for TIME and other magazines, she escorts us into the darkest regions of the human experience, flicks on a flashlight and searches for signs of life. She chronicled Hurricanes Katrina and Rita from New Orleans, La., helping TIME win two National Magazine Awards. She covered 9/11 and the anthrax attacks from Manhattan, the sniper attacks from Washington and the catastrophic 2003 European heat wave from Paris.
What makes Amanda’s work unusual is that she doesn’t just explain what happened; she obsessively investigates why people do what they do, and how we can do better.
- “What Makes a Great Teacher?”
- “How to Get Out Alive: The Science of Evacuation”
- “How We Got Homeland Security Wrong”
- “Hurricane Katrina: How did this happen?”
- “The Gangs of New Orleans”
- “Can Michelle Rhee Save Our Schools?”
- “The Fort Dix Terrorism Conspiracy”
- “The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother”
To discuss her work, Amanda has appeared on ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX News and NPR. She has briefed staff at the Pentagon, the Senate, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Peace Corps and FEMA, and she has spoken at conferences on leadership, homeland security, emergency preparedness and public health. The Unthinkable was described by the New York Times as “a fascinating and useful new book” and by NPR as “The thinking person’s manual for getting out alive.”
Amanda’s work has also appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, the New York Times Magazine, the Times of London, National Geographic Adventure and the Washington Monthly. She has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Newswomen’s Club of New York and the Washington Monthly, among others. Before joining TIME, Amanda covered the D.C. court system for Washington City Paper and reported on Capitol Hill for Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a BA in Government from Cornell University.
Amanda now writes feature magazine stories about everything from risk to education reform.
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Upcoming Events
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Unthinkable in Monterey
