"Odds against Tomorrow," by Nathaniel Rich.

     Nathaniel Rich has just published a new book that was briefly noted in the New Yorker. I went into the DC Library's catalogue to see if the Library had it--no, it didn't: but up came an earlier book, "Odds Against Tomorrow" that was available for downloading to my I-pad. And a what a book it turned out to be.
     The principal character, Mitchell Zukor, has a constant fear of future disaster--be it earthquakes, floods, pandemics, financial collapse, nuclear war, invasion by aliens--and he seems to be able to work out the odds on these things happening--indeed, it seems, the odds on anything happening. After a brief career in finance, he moves to a strange  company called Future World, which consults with corporations on the various risks they run and seems to provide them with legal cover in the event of some disaster striking. This corporate concern with disaster has been raised by a massive earthquake in Seattle, where the courts decreed huge damages to the personnel of firms that had occupied offices not built to withstand earthquakes.
      There is a sub-plot or subsidiary story line, involving Mitchell's obsession with a girl with a strange heart defect who establishes a 'back to the land' community in New England.
       The center of the book is a major disaster that strikes new York--a massive flood and huge destruction of property by a typhoon. Rivers run down Broadway, Grand Central Station is blocked with drowned bodies, the Hudson and the East River meet, and Mitchell and his 'on-again-off-again' female colleague and pal, Jane Eppler, paddle their way to safety in a canoe...and things get more and more complicated from there on.
        I am not doing justice to the convoluted story line, but the book is a great read--perhaps overly long and perhaps the ending is a bit of a cop-out...though how to end it must have been puzzle for the author--who is staggeringly good writer.