The purpose of this book is to change thinking about crises and risk. Risk management is today both a great success, an impressive achievement, and a notable failure. It works, and it doesn't work. It saves lives and property, and it fails to save lives and property. It helps and it hinders. Like all such management approaches, this has a lot to do with how it is employed and practiced, but in the case of risk management there is also a much more fundamental issue.