This book explores the human contribution to the reliability and resilience of complex, well-defended systems. Usually the human is considered a hazard - a system component whose unsafe acts are implicated in the majority of catastrophic breakdowns. However there is another perspective that has been relatively little studied in its own right - the human as hero, whose adaptations and compensations bring troubled systems back from the brink of disaster time and again. What, if anything, did...

Human Error, published in 1991, is a major theoretical integration of several previously isolated literatures. Particularly important is the identification of cognitive processes common to a wide variety of error types. Technology has now reached a point where improved safety can only be achieved on the basis of a better understanding of human error mechanisms. In its treatment of major accidents, the book spans the disciplinary gulf between psychological theory and those concerned with ma...

Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents introduced the notion of an ’organizational accident’. These are rare but often calamitous events that occur in complex technological systems operating in hazardous circumstances. They stand in sharp contrast to ’individual accidents’ whose damaging consequences are limited to relatively few people or assets. Although they share some common causal factors, they mostly have quite different causal pathways. The frequency of individual accidents ...

Known for his ability to make history come vividly to life, Reasoner strips away the dime novel legends and Hollywood myths to show us how the gunfighters of the Old West really lived, killed, and were killed.Praised for his “well-researched” (Booklist) and “lively, suspenseful” (Publishers Weekly) novels, James Reasoner now proves that truth can be even more exciting than fiction.Among the true stories he brings us:• Doc ...

Callista Kingfisher is a former mixed martial arts fighter and one of the top stunt performers in Hollywood. But when an accident on a movie set leaves her badly injured, she goes home to Corpus Christi, Texas, to recuperate.Callie's triplet brother Joseph is a top private investigator, and when he lands the job of tracking down a fugitive who has disappeared into the thick Piney Woods of East Texas, Callie decides she'll give her brother a hand with the case. Both Kingfishers are ...

It is 1941, and friends Adam, Joe, Dale, and Catherine are similar to most young adults. College, dating, and fast cars are what they know and live for. And in Chicago, Illinois, the near center of America, world conflict seems merely a distant rumor.But as turmoil in Europe develops into full-scale war, Chicago suddenly abounds with talk of America's entering the fight. Drawn by the promise of freedom and the allure of battle, Joe and Dale join the Army, Adam the Marines, and Cathe...

In early 1862, the Civil War comes within view of the Brannon family farm in Culpeper County, Virginia. The din of drilling soldiers sweeps over the quiet county seat, and another Brannon son, Mac, answers the call to arms.The long-anticipated spring offensive pitches the Union and Confederate armies against each other on the Virginia Peninsula, and it appears that Richmond and the fledgling Confederacy are doomed. As the Southerners fall back before the slowly advancing Northern a...

This succinct but absorbing book covers the main way stations on James Reason’s 40-year journey in pursuit of the nature and varieties of human error. In it he presents an engrossing and very personal perspective, offering the reader exceptional insights, wisdom and wit as only James Reason can. The journey begins with a bizarre absent-minded action slip committed by Professor Reason in the early 1970s - putting cat food into the teapot - and continues up to the present day, conveying his ...

When a group of buffalo hunters gets into a scuffle with a party of Indians, the end results are tragic-leaving all but one of the Indians dead. With the sole survivor on his way to rally the rest of his tribe for vengeance, the buffalo hunters hightail it to the closest settlement, putting Redemption and new Marshall Bill Harvey in the middle of a range war ...

Following the defeat of Confederate forces at Chattanooga, the battered Rebel army, including a bitter Cory Brannon, retreats slowly toward Atlanta. A large Union army led by General William Sherman is marching to the coastal city of Savannah, laying waste to the territory through which it passes. Behind enemy lines on the Brannon family farm, Henry has been removed as sheriff, and to everyone’s surprise, Cordelia is courted by a Union officer, a Yankee she finds herself unable to hate. As...

Major accidents are rare events due to the many barriers, safeguards and defences developed by modern technologies. But they continue to happen with saddening regularity and their human and financial consequences are all too often unacceptably catastrophic. One of the greatest challenges we face is to develop more effective ways of both understanding and limiting their occurrence. This lucid book presents a set of common principles to further our knowledge of the causes of major accidents ...

Injured in a cattle stampede on a drive through Kansas, Bill is healing in Redemption. Tended to by a shopkeeper's lovely daughter, Eden Monroe, there are worse places he could be. But Bill knows something's wrong. A series of unexplained killings plagues the town. It's up to Bill to figure out what's going on before his beloved Eden gets caught in the cross fire.