Just finished "A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit. It describes how the vast majority of ordinary people actually behave in a disaster ("in Hell" to quote the title), and that it is mostly good, calm and very social (so much so that some even describe it as "a Paradise"). The book was published 2009 (16 years ago), so it's content has already become well-known on the left, meaning that it didn't have quite as much new stuff for me as it probably had for the typical reader back when it came out.

While it has a lot of good and I therefore consider it a must-read for everyone who doesn't already know the topic, it is far too little ideological for my tastes (although this admittedly might increase it reach). For example the book at length portrays the viewpoints of people who are wrong and have no real bearing on the point of the book (which I therefore would have left out) and despite showing pretty in depth that anarchism is much more "natural" (for what it's worth… – I'm not generally in favor of such arguments, but it's one that is brought up here) and better for most people, it doesn't come out for anarchism straight out and the author also seems to not be an anarchist herself (although my judgement of the book here is of course somewhat colored by the fact that I'm an anarchist myself…).

To make its point the book talks about a couple historical cases of disasters, ranging (among others) from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the Blitz in Britain during WW2 to the more modern ones of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina (it's very funny/weird to me as someone who was born between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina that it treats these things as if they were recent (because of course when in was written from 2004 to 2009 they genuinely were.)).