Carl A. Maida is a professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. A medical anthropologist, he has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on health and the environment in metropolitan Los Angeles. Previous publications include Pathways Through Crisis: Urban Risk and Public Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), Children and Disasters (Routledge, 1999), and The Crisis of Competence: Transitional Stress and the Displaced Worker (Routledge,1990).