The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Man this was the wrong book to read just as the nights got longer. It was obviously depressing. I had been meaning to read it for a while, and then Chad suggested it and it was available digitally. Thanks, NYPL!
While I enjoyed the book, and agreed with most of it, I didn’t feel like I learned a lot more than I already knew. The beginning of the book sets out very bluntly to find out whose fault it is. And yet, in the end, it’s still kind of everyone’s fault. While I agree with Brinkley’s statement that those who say it isn’t important whose fault it is probably say that because it would implicate them, I don’t think that fault is the be all and end all. It would have been more useful to know, say, how to prevent it happening again. And part of my frustration about this part of the book is because if someone did SOMETHING, anything at many points, the extent could have been lessened. That’s probably more a frustration with the situation than with the book though….
Mainly, though this book assigns fault, it doesn’t tell me WHY the people at fault did nothing. And that for me is the central mystery. Yes I know George Bush ignored NOLA’s pleas, but the book I want is WHY did he do so. I mean there is the easy Kanye West, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” which I do not doubt, although I think the more accurate statement would be, “George Bush doesn’t care about poor people.” This “WHY?” idea gets a SMALL mention at the end of the book (local lawmakers didn’t ask for anything specific from feds, just for “help,” which feds took as a sign they didn’t need anything) but not why any president would feel comfortable not doing anything in a time of national crisis is a question I still can’t answer. But probably no one can.
2 Comments so far
1. Chad wrote on December 2nd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Maybe it’s a “you had to be there” moment, but I felt it laid out the point of local, state, and national political bureaucracy and political infighting that wasn’t there in the media. I didn’t realize what a ninny, spineless, and self-aggrandizing heretic C. Ray Nagin truly was, nor what a savvy political insider Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco is/was in a mostly Republican old-boy network state, and had no idea of the incompetency and braggadocio of Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff who finally admitted fault a year later until I read this journalistic masterwork (and watch Susan Collins, R-ME, pull his pants down and spank him in public in this CNN article). I’d consider it up there with Dark Alliance by Gary Webb in terms of journalistic integrity and public lack of acknowledgment. But, hey, it’s just a book
Thanks for following up on OPP (Other People Politics), Jenny!
2. jenny wrote on December 2nd, 2007 at 11:43 pm
That is a good point–I think the interplay between different levels of government was good–I think it’s sad I DIDN’T know that kind of stuff!
And I guess I knew that Nagin was an idiot, but not as many of the specifics.
Yeah perhaps this was too negative, because I did really like the book, and thought it was useful, but it left me frustrated (not only cuz of the whole story which is itself frustrating) to not know what I really wanted to know!