CAT Limited is a privately held underwriter of property catastrophe reinsurance. The company’s annual reports to clients, brokers, and shareholders offer a great design problem: how to make costly natural disasters look good.

The 1996 book does this through illustrations made up of the statistics from large catastrophes. Figures for death and property damage take on the form of tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Accompanying text and diagrams describe CAT Limited’s methods of assessing risk.