Nathaniel Rich’s Quant Hero Bets on Next NYC Superstorm
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As Nathaniel Rich’s second novel, “Odds Against Tomorrow,” opens, it’s a few years from now. U.S. companies are still rattled from an earthquake that destroyed Seattle and forced many to pay record settlements to victims.
Rich’s quant hero, Mitchell Zukor, is the right man at the right time. A young math whiz fixated on catastrophe, he joins a firm called FutureWorld to pitch corporate clients on a way to limit their liability from any disaster. Then his Jeremiads are borne out in a superstorm that floods Manhattan.