AbstractDaniel Aldrich has written a masterful book with Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post‐Disaster Recovery. In this comment on the book, I discuss some of the challenges he faced and tried to overcome in finding and using indicators of social capital and disaster recovery. Having recently completed a very large data collection effort myself in post‐Katrina New Orleans, I describe some of the tasks that face researchers. I also highlight some of the requirements of combining survey with spatial and government data. Then I discuss some of the policy issues in recovery. I share Aldrich's skepticism of top‐down approaches, though of course they are a necessary component, and describe some ways they may be unhelpful or even counterproductive. When community members work together effectively, they can sometimes even bend the curve of resources required for recovery.