Customer Reviews

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the ultimate coffee table book -- a beautiful page-turner that will spark conversation and leave you wanting more. I just visited New Orleans and happened upon a book signing with the author. Gladly payed full-price for the book, but it looks like Amazon is offering a GREAT deal now! Please remember New Orleans and all of the Gulf Coast, with people still recovering from Katrina years later. "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge" is a stunning, unique, accessible chronicle of tragedy and history in the making.A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

I really liked this book. It brings you back to that place and time that so many of us have already forgotten.

The comic book format gives you access to characters making those basic human decisions that were so perilous at the time -- a family with a sick kid reaches a hospital which is being evacuate. They can't stop, but have to figure out if they should leave their sick child behind. A shopkeeper needs to decide if he should stay in his store and defend against looters, or abandon the city. Families get dropped off at the convention center and can't figure out if buses will or will not come. Will the feds come and help or not? It's all here.

Neufeld's book is really well done and brings these stories to light in a remarkable manner. It is clearly well reported too -- he seems to have spent a lot of time interviewing people to get their stories.

It is a quick read, a sad read, and a beautiful read all at once.

Ben

The book is interesting and its in the form of a comic book along the lines of the various Shakespeare books we have that Simon Greaves has written and illustrated.

Liked seeing/reading of the young comic book collector, small store owner, native New Orleans physician. In fact I think young people would get a lot out of the book because of its comic book form. Think Doonesbury with a real story line.

Leo the comic book collector really was interesting to our son who is an avid comic book collector, who gasped when he read how Leo had to leave his thousands of comic books behind when he and his wife evacuated New Orleans, taking one comic book with them. Thus this book is one I will give to young men I know who also collect comic books.

And the illustrations are wonderful and give meaning to the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words!

AD is a graphic novel (journalistic piece) that doesn't wow as much as it generally pleases. The artwork is stunningly competent and the story similarly sufficient but not ground breaking. For all of the amazing press surrounding this book I expected much more. I don't fault the artist for not trying hard enough but I do see this work as indicative of a safe view of comic art in the US. This work drips with a sunny, naïve optimism that is in total contrast with the actual events (maybe I just don't like the drawing). The horrors of Katrina really warrant a treatment that doesn't shy away from the gritty truth and plumbs the depth of human suffering and neglect. This work (like most other graphic novels) stays safely on the sidelines and at least in this readers opinion, holds back where it should have been diving deeper in the murky toxic waters of New Orleans.

I'm not really one to read graphic novels, but I saw this at a friend's and was intrigued. I started reading and literally read the book all the way through! It was so good: interesting and informative without being overwhelming. It elicited many emotions from me, which I didn't think was possible from a graphic novel. A great and important work of art and literature.

This graphic story will make you feel like you were there, feeling what the people there felt. I can see why the people in the Dome thought they were being set up to die. How frightening and infuriating. Not melodramatic, just real.

Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city of New Orleans in August 2005, was an epic disaster in American history. It held us all in thrall to our television sets for weeks. But what Josh Neufeld's masterful comic book, or graphic novel about the subject wisely does is give us a perspective on this cataclysmic event through the eyes of a few survivors of that drama that goes light years beyond what television delivered. The structure of the book is a calendar posting of the days before, during, and after the storm, chilling depictions of the natural events and a shifting of colors so gripping, that I literally could not put it down. The survivors we follow through the storm and its aftermath are people outside of the gentrified and suburbanized quarters of New Orleans, and much of America. We resonate to their human-scale concerns as they attempt to ride out or evade the destruction that implodes in their midst. Real family values and ties of friendship, not the often erzatz versions that are dispensed through political rhetoric, are present on every page. The drawings and real-life dialogue so viscerally convey their emotions, which you or I might have in a similar situation, that it was hard to keep in mind that this book was a created artifact. It seemed as I read that it must have sprung to life in one moment as the embodiement of this unforgettable event. I don't want to give away any of its contents, so I will just say, it's a must read and a must keep. For high school and college teachers, as I am, I would recommend the Random House Teachers' Guide by Sari Wilson, which helps young people probe the depths of what the Deluge means in the context of their own lives and that of our nation.

The images from Katrina were overwhelming, and the facts and figures were so big that sometimes it made the disaster abstract. Reading this book makes it all so much more real, thanks to the wonderfully vivid depictions of the people who live and love the city of New Orleans and what they went through. The artwork and the color is gorgeous and the people are treated with deftness, humor and grace. I couldn't put it down. I think it a few decades when your kids want to know more about Katrina, you couldn't do better than to give them a copy of this book and tell them to read it.

I'm not really sure what more can be said about this book that hasn't already been said in many of the larger media outlets (New York Times, LA Times, etc. etc. etc.). But I can say this... up until now, I have only placed -- on prominent display -- two other so-called "graphic novels" among my collection of great literary works: Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and Joe Sacco's "Palestine." Rarely do cartoonists tackle such weighty issues so deftly, illustrating relevant and often painful subject matters with the deepest empathy while managing to avoid becoming pedantic and maudlin. Like Spiegelman and Sacco, Mr. Neufeld has brought to life, in his own unique and inimitable way, a chapter in human history that cannot be ignored, and in fact must be discussed and remembered. And he has done so not by playing it safe -- by churning out yet another trite and overly egregious account of events that might cheapen the subject matter (after all, the visual devastation of Katrina has been thoroughly played out on television, so much so that it has been somewhat diminished into yet another voyeuristic reality show, transforming it into stale and vulgar entertainment). Instead, Mr. Neufeld does the unexpected: he brings it down to earth, makes it intimate, allows those of us who lived safely thousands of miles away to hear, see and perhaps feel the hurricane's impact as it was felt by the people who experienced it firsthand. He has essentially retold a familiar story, but in such a way to make it fresh and even more poignant than before. Not an easy task, but with "A.D." it is absolutely achieved. If you are looking for a superficial and one-dimensional cheap thrill -- to find entertainment in the blood, guts, and other viscera of a natural catastrophe -- perhaps you'd do better watching the Weather Channel. If you want to have fresh insight into the full human drama that played out during Katrina -- the sadness, fear, tragic mistakes and cynicism, all nonetheless mixed with humor and optimism -- then read "A.D."

this book is the best depiction of the lives of people directly effected by Katrina that I have ever seen. The characters are engrossing and the emotional impact of each of their stories is huge. A fairly devastating read.
I have read other books by Neufeld, including the great "A Few Perfect Hours" series, and have long been a fan. But this represents a high water mark not only for Neufeld, but for graphic novels as well. Seriously... get this. Great stuff.