Customer Reviews

City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrina

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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~]

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.

"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.

If you are looking for photos of the Katrina disaster this is not your book! Informational only with a few small black and white pictures. Not what I expected!