The Devil Never Sleeps Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters

An urgent, transformative guide to dealing with disasters from one of today’s foremost thinkers in crisis management.

The future may still be unpredictable, but nowadays, disasters are not. We live in a time of constant, consistent catastrophe, where things more often go wrong than they go right. So why do we still fumble when disaster hits? Why are we always one step behind?

In The Devil Never Sleeps, Juliette Kayyem lays the groundwork for a new approach to dealing with disasters. Presenting the basic themes of crisis management, Kayyem amends the principles we rely on far too easily. Instead, she offers us a new framework to anticipate the “devil’s” inevitable return, highlighting the leadership deficiencies we need to overcome and the forward thinking we need to harness. It’s no longer about preventing a disaster from occurring, but learning how to use the tools at our disposal to minimize the consequences when it does.

Filled with personal anecdotes and real-life examples from natural disasters like the California wildfires to man-made ones like the Boeing 737 MAX crisis, The Devil Never Sleeps is a guide for governments, businesses, and individuals alike on how to alter our thinking so that we can develop effective strategies in the face of perpetual catastrophe.

Juliette Kayyem is currently the Robert and Renee Belfer Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she is Faculty Director of the Homeland Security Project and the Security and Global Health Project.

She is the CEO and Co – Founder of Grip Mobility, a technology company looking to provide transparency in the rideshare industry. She has spent over 20 years managing complex policy initiatives and organizing government responses to major crises in both state and federal government. She is a regular contributor to the Atlantic magazine, and a commentator on CNN.