Author Jed Horne will speak Tuesday, Feb. 14, at the University of Central Florida about how societies overcome disastrous events.

Horne will give a presentation entitled “Envisioning Recovery After a Major Catastrophe: From Katrina to Fukushima” at 3 p.m. in the Pegasus Ballroom of the Student Union. The event, organized by the UCF Global Perspectives Office, is part of the 2011-2012 themes of “People Power, Politics and Global Change” and “Covering Global Crises from the Frontlines.” It is free and open to the public.

Horne is the author of “Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City.” “Breach of Faith” was nominated by the New York Public Library for the Helen Bernstein Award for best nonfiction book of 2006.

Horne previously spent 20 years as an editor and reporter for The Times-Picayune, the New Orleans daily newspaper. He spent much of the 1970s and ’80s as a writer and editor, primarily for Time Inc. publications.

Assigned to Latin America in the early 1990s for The Times-Picayune as the paper’s foreign correspondent, he was named city editor in 1994, the job he held when Hurricane Katrina struck. He was subsequently named metro editor before leaving the paper to write books. His bylined work on Katrina was included in submissions by the staff of The Times-Picayune, for which the newspaper was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes in 2006.

The event is a co-curricular component of the UCF General Education Program Unifying Theme: “The Environment and Global Climate Change.”

In addition to the Global Perspectives Office, sponsors and partners include Lawrence J. Chastang and the Chastang Foundation, Orlando Area Committee on Foreign Relations, Sibille H. Pritchard Global Peace Fellowship program, the UCF Global Peace and Security Studies Program, the UCF Office of Undergraduate Studies, the UCF Nicholson School of Communication, the UCF Office of Diversity Initiatives, The Isle of Man Small Countries Program at UCF, UCF LIFE, the UCF Book Festival 2012 in association with the Morgridge International Reading Center, the UCF Political Science Department and the Global Connections Foundation.