City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina [Hardcover]

Jenni Bergal (Author), Sara Shipley Hiles (Author), Frank Koughan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807132845 | ISBN-13: 978-0807132845 | Publication Date: June 2007

Foreword by Dan Rather

Hurricane Katrina was a stunning example of complete civic breakdown. Beginning on August 29, 2005, the world watched in horror as--despite all the warnings and studies--every system that might have protected New Orleans failed. Levees and canals buckled, pouring more than 100 billion gallons of floodwater into the city. Botched communications crippled rescue operations. Buses that might have evacuated thousands never came. Hospitals lost power, and patients lay suffering in darkness and stifling heat. At least 1,400 Louisianans died in Hurricane Katrina, more than half of them from New Orleans, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced, many still wondering if they will ever be able to return. How could all of this have happened in twenty-first-century America? And could it all happen again?

To answer these questions, the Center for Public Integrity commissioned seven seasoned journalists to travel to New Orleans and investigate the storm's aftermath. In City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina, they present their findings. The stellar roster of contributors includes Pulitzer Prize-winner John McQuaid, whose earlier work predicted the failure of the levees and the impending disaster; longtime Boston Globe newsman Curtis Wilkie, a French Quarter resident for nearly fifteen years; and Katy Reckdahl, an award-winning freelance journalist who gave birth to her son in a New Orleans hospital the day before Katrina hit.

They and the rest of the investigative team interviewed homeowners and health officials, first responders and politicians, and evacuees and other ordinary citizens to explore the storm from numerous angles, including health care, social services, housing and insurance, and emergency preparedness. They also identify the political, social, geographical, and technological factors that compounded the tragedy.

Comprehensive and balanced, City Adrift provides not only an assessment of what went wrong in the Big Easy during and following Hurricane Katrina, but also, more importantly, a road map of what must be done to ensure that such a devastating tragedy is never repeated.

184 pages, 29 Halftones, 6 x 9

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This objective investigation conducted by seven outstanding journalists is an overwhelming indictment of the failure on the part of government and nongovernment agencies to respond to both the threat and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sara Shipley Hiles, a journalist on environmental issues, explores the natural and man-made environmental factors that contributed to the catastrophe; she further explains the negative impact of the Bush administration's downsizing, in 2004, of a Louisiana coastal restoration plan. Jim Morris details how an eviscerated Federal Emergency Management Agency, despite adequate warning, tragically failed to evacuate the population. Another piece by Curtis Wilkie details the heritage of corrupt state and local politics that led to a civic breakdown and an immobilized judicial system. According to this very disheartening examination, New Orleans, despite federal promises, is now less able to withstand a hurricane than it was in 2005. Graphic black-and-white photos throughout are a haunting reminder of the television images of a helpless and dying American city that horrified the country in 2005. This excellent exposé of corruption and incompetence, conducted under the auspices of the Center for Public Integrity (a nonpartisan organization that sponsors investigative journalism) should lead to calls for future accountability.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

"This book documents, with clarity and cogency, how virtually every agency and institution, public and private, failed a city when the threatened `big storm' finally struck."--John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center and former editor and publisher of the Nashville Tennessean

"City Adrift is the most disturbing and engrossing book on the heartbreaking entrance of Hurricane Katrina into our nation's mythology. The reporting is infuriating and devastating in its power and terrible accuracy. The disaster did not have to happen, and this book provides further proof that the winds of Katrina will refuse to die down in our lifetime."--Pat Conroy

"If there was any doubt that Hurricane Katrina was, in reality, a man-made catastrophe in New Orleans, this book dispels it, fact by indisputable fact. Anyone who believes that government exists primarily to protect the public from events and matters beyond an individual's control will be appalled and embarrassed. This is an important book that exposes the depth and breadth of government dysfunction with ramifications far beyond the levees and bayous of southeastern Louisiana."--Bryan Norcross, CBS News hurricane analyst and author of Hurricane Almanac 2006

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (June 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807132845
• ISBN-13: 978-0807132845
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #965,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything Went Wrong, September 1, 2007

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina (Hardcover)

Many books about the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe are starting to appear, with many different views of who is to blame for the despicable government response to the disaster. This short book from the Center for Public Integrity consists of a series of in-depth investigative reports conforming to the organization's philosophies of nonpartisanship and government transparency. Therefore, some readers may be disappointed by this book's lack of muckraking or calls for accountability from certain politicians. But on the other hand, this series of reports does benefit greatly from its wide-ranging focus and its spirit of investigating the systematic failures that caused *everything* to go wrong in New Orleans. There is certainly coverage of the various levels of ineptitude within the federal government, though the reader is also rewarded with highly illuminating looks at the failures within state and local government, the health care establishment, the insurance industry, charitable organizations, and the regional housing market. We also learn about the unique and longstanding cultural and political trends in New Orleans that made the city likely to collapse in the face of disaster and which are unlikely to improve the lives of victims in the foreseeable future. This book shows that there is plenty of blame to go around for the Katrina catastrophe, and that official denials and buck-passing are likely to continue amongst many different levels and branches of government. Track down this volume for in-depth investigations in which the facts speak for themselves - disturbingly. [~doomsdayer520~]

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Failure of analysis, May 8, 2009

By 

Mark Purcell (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina (Hardcover)

This book is appalling--it fails to provide trenchant analysis of WHY systems broke down and spends most of its time shaking its head at the failure of planning or organization without ever giving almost any useful account of WHY things failed. The lesson we get from the Health Care chapter, for example, is don't get sick during a disaster. Not much help for moving forward. Maybe instead we should be learning lessons about WHY LSU hospitals couldn't get state funding to move their generators above ground (why were the grants denied? what did the state decide to spend money on instead?). There is much blame cast without any explanation--the National Guard had the means to evacuate people at Charity, but didn't. WHY? Were they just sitting around because they didn't want to help? Or was there a specific set of reasons why they did not evacuate people? Explain that failure!! Don't just shake your head in disgust at the breakdowns--we know they happened, we know they are unacceptable--what we need to understand is WHY they happened. And this book spectacularly fails to deliver that essential analysis. I assigned this book to my students as an introduction to Katrina. They will walk away shaking their heads in disgust at the failures, and they will have almost no idea how we can avoid similar failures in the future.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Why it happened and will happen again, January 1, 2008

By 

K. J. Nuzum (Wooster, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina (Hardcover)

"Everything that happened in Katrina was preventable, and everything that happened was predictable." This sobering assessment from a former FEMA employee could be the theme of this compilation of journalist investigative reports into the myriad failings of local, state, and federal governments as well as social services, insurance companies, and health care.
An excellent unbiased assessment of what went wrong and a sad prediction that little will change in the institutions and people that would prevent a reoccurrence of such a calamity.