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Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 And How It Changed America

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This is basically a story of how men with position, power, and money can mistreat their poorer neighbors, black and white, and walk away with lily-white hands, their aristocratic noses held high. I never thought I'd be rooting for Huey Long to become governor of Louisiana but compared to the power structure he was replacing, he was a knight in shining armor.

The river that weaves through the story is of course, the Mississippi, and the author begins in the mid-1800s up through the great flood of 1927, and a few years beyond. He has some astounding history to tell us:

* The 1920s version of the Ku Klux Klan failed, not because it didn't have grassroots support, but because it had never been visualized as an organization like, say, the Kiwanis. It was basically set up as a pyramid scheme to sell memberships with weird titles like 'kleagle,' 'wizard,' 'exalted cyclop,' and 'hydra of the realm.' Klansmen ended up as elected officials in several states, but squabbled over the membership fees, defrauded members of their contributions, and sank quickly out of sight, although not quick enough for some.

* One of the chief Mississippi Delta plantation owners, LeRoy Percy, kicked the Klan out of his county, calling them 'spies, liars, [and] cowards.' Later, he blocked the transportation of black flood refugees from his county, afraid that once they left they'd never return. So his sharecroppers spent a miserable few months on the levee with inadequate food, shelter, and medical attention, forced into work gangs to repair the levees.

* The engineers who originally surveyed the Mississippi River in order to recommend flood-control measures were flatly opposed to a levees-only policy. Yet through cronyism, bad compromises, and ignorance, levees-only became the official standard. This author proves that it was absolutely doomed to failure.

* New Orleans was never in any real danger from the flood of 1927. Too many levees had given way upstream for the flood waters to threaten the great port city. Nevertheless, the bankers and businessmen decided prop up the confidence of their investors by dynamiting the levees downriver from their city and turning 10,000 of their neighbors into refugees. The refugees with very few exceptions were never reimbursed for their lost property and mangled lives.

There is one heroic man in this book: the engineer James Buchanan Eads who understood the Mississippi River better than any living man. He had spent the first part of his career salvaging wrecks from the bottom of the river, and was bitterly opposed to the policies of the Army Corps of Engineers. Eads was ultimately proved correct in almost every policy he advocated, almost every engineering project he drove forward on the river, including the jetties that deepened the South Pass of the river, and allowed ocean vessels to dock at the Port of New Orleans.

If only all of the capitalists and engineers in this book had been like Eads, the Great Flood of 1927 which forced nearly a million people from their homes, might never have come to pass.

This book is an absorbing, original look at an era in the Deep South that most of us would rather pass quickly by. The great natural disaster that Barry so vividly describes was a turning point in our nation: a death blow to share-cropping practices in the Delta bottomlands; and the robber-baron elite of New Orleans (Huey Long saw to the latter).

No one remembers the 1927 flood, or even that it happened; but it was the events surrounding that single event which more than anything else gave us modern America, and John Barry's book is essential to understanding it.

Obviously the book gives a full account of the flood itself, of the history of the river and of the delta, of the people who carved a nation out of wilderness and who lived and died in the catastrophe; without a doubt, Barry does all this, and does it in gripping style: the book is hard to put down.

But Barry does far more. In telling the story, he shows how a heretofore anti-socialist America was forced by unprecedented circumstance to embrace an enormous, Washington-based big-government solution to the greatest natural catastrophe in our history, preparing the way (psychologically and otherwise) for the New Deal. He shows how this was accomplished through the Republican (but left-wing) Herbert Hoover, who would never have become President without the flood. Most importantly, he shows how Hoover's foolish, all-encompassing arrogance single-handedly drove the backbone of the Republican Party -- African Americans -- away from the GOP and into the arms of the segregationist, generally pro-KKK Democrats (a truly amazing feat). It is an amazing tale indeed.

It holds important lessons for the future as well. Hoover's loss of the black community is a lesson virtually unknown to modern readers (who generally assume they just drifted away under the New Deal), and holds important (and perhaps urgent) lessons for modern Democrats and Republicans alike.

But on a more fundamental level, the book teaches us the power of the river, a lesson we've forgotten even in the face of some reasonably large modern floods. Someday, possibly very soon, the levy system will likely be destroyed by the long-predicted earthquake along the New Madrid Fault: when that day comes, the lessons of Rising Tide will be life and death matters. Southerners in particular may ignore Rising Tide only at their peril.

I read "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America" several years ago; the parallels to today's Katrina disaster are eerily similar. This book is a must-read in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Like Katrina, thousands of square miles were flooded in Mississippi and Louisiana in 1927, only by a rain-swollen Mississippi River, not storm surges off the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Southerners were displaced, with many of the black refugees eventually finding a home in the north.

Herbert Hoover's work on relief efforts helped win him the White House, while poor Louisianans' anger and frustration launched populist Huey Long's career in Louisiana and national politics (Long was a later serious threat to Roosevelt's

Racism, inept responses, civil disorder, haves vs. have-nots, disease, massive refugee displacement, mile after mile of flooded Southern countryside, permanent shifts in American politics -- 2005 is in many ways a variation on the 1927 disaster.

John Barry's account of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 includes the roles that members of my family played in the flood's aftermath and also in the creation of Delta levees during the 19th century. He got almost everything right - including his depiction of the homosexuality of my cousin, William Alexander Percy , who published a classic memoir of Southern life, Lanterns on the Levee, a bestseller still in print today. When the flood hit, inundating Will's home town of Greenville, Mississippi, the mayor appointed him chief of an emergency relief committee.
All went well until Will's father LeRoy objected to Will's plan to evacuate thousands of black sharecroppers marooned on the levee. LeRoy feared that if the sharecroppers left the Delta they would never return. He insisted they go for a walk together. The only first-hand report we have of what Will and LeRoy discussed is Will's description in Lanterns. I do not think that Will told the full story, but we do know that LeRoy extracted an agreement to consult one last time the members of his emergency committee, and that not long after, the barges waiting on the river to take the refugees were sent down the Mississippi empty.
John Barry does not speculate as I do that LeRoy threatened Will on account of his homosexuality, but he rightly concludes that the frail, literary gay son could not stand up to his domineering father. Rising Tide provides an accurate analysis of their relationship, in the process giving the fullest public account to date of Will's sexual nature. He describes Will's affairs with three of his black chauffeurs--a subject that not even Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of House of Percy, discusses. Barry's book is important for our family pride, though most of my Southern cousins do not agree.

(..._

A combination of Mother Nature and human error and arrogance caused the disaster that flooded thousands of square miles of land in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas in 1927, when the Mississippi River flooded. Nature provided an excessive amount of water from heavy rains and snow all that winter--flood levels were higher than ever, earlier than ever. But faulty policy (a levee-only approach to flood control), southern arrogance (business interests succeeded in saving New Orleans at the expense of many others who were never compensated for their losses as promised), and, of course, racism (whites tried to "enslave" blacks on the levees to make them work and keep them from migrating north) all contributed to the disaster. Whole counties were under 3 to 20 feet of water, one million people were displaced. The flood affected many things: it swept Hoover into the White House (Coolidge refused to do anything to help the people); it changed peoples' view of what the role of government should be in these kinds of disasters; it destroyed the myth of the white-black patronage system (blacks working the land as sharecroppers in exchange for the "protection" of whites); and it changed the way the great river would be managed (spillways would be built). Barry tells all of this excellently, in the old narrative history style of the great historians of the past, making it interesting at every turn. Highly recommended.

John Barry's superb RISING TIDE can be viewed through many prisms, but obviously today, we will all see it through post-Hurricane Katrina eyes. Let it first be said that Barry is a superb writer, with lively prose that vividly portrays colorful characters, intriguing vignettes, and that huge, unrelenting Mississippi River.

He has the trained eye of a detective that picks up subtle-yet-important details, but he also sees the big picture, and does a superb job of connecting actions with long-term consequences. As a native resident of the Deep South, I appreciated his sensitivity and insights into our history, into our overall culture, and into our many varied sub-cultures.

Beyond all of that, we can now see that Barry's insights were not only excellent, but they were prophetic. So many lessons from 1927 and beyond remained unlearned, ticking like a terrible time bomb that detonated in the fury of Katrina and its tragic aftermath. If only this book had been as widely read before Katrina as it is being read now. If you want to understand Louisiana (and Mississippi), and why it is the way it is, this book provides some very important keys.

Paul McCartney once sang, "I go back so far, I'm in front of me." Barry's trip back in time serves as a useful compass for the days ahead. It is useful to study history and learn from it; a clearer understanding of our past assists us in responding to the present and planning for the future.

The flood of 1927 not only changed the history of the Delta, but all of America. It remains to be seen how Hurricane Katrina will affect history, but rest assured that it will not simply be a localized or temporary event. RISING TIDE offers vital clues to us about what lies in front of us.

Picked this book up after the recent PBS/ American Experience documentary based on it. It's far better than that show was, is wonderfully written, is as solidly researched a book as you are likely to find on any subject, and it's as tense as a disaster movie. The author was blessed, of course, with great material: some extraordinary characters, not to mention the Mississippi River itself, and the greatest natural disaster in American history (close to 1 million people flooded out of their homes). He more than does justice to the subject and teaches much about how science should be done, then gets into a very original and provocative-- and well supported by the evidence-- interpretation of race relations and the flood's impact on national politics. As the author says, the story starts out as book of man against nature, and becomes one of man against man. Read this book.

I grew up near the Mississippi and you can't spend as much time on or near it as I did without realizing how it drives the day-to-day lives of those around it. It's not just a body of water but a muddy artery that carries life or death. There is finally a book that does it justice.

While some might claim that this is a work waylaid by detail, I strongly disagree. That, in fact, is the beauty of this book because all of those details send out tendrils that eventually start meshing about a third of the way in. Once they do, the pace and energy of this epic tale start building. And for me, it started answering a lot of questions I had had since childhood.

I remember my father talking about patrolling a section of levee all night in 1927 looking out for Arkansas dynamiters with orders from the sheriff to shoot to kill if any nighttime boatmen didn't answer his challenge. This book gives those stories a reality that is hard to desctibe.

I can remember how the river stage was carried at the top right hand corner of the front page of Memphis papers and was relentlessly discussed. This book explains why this was no idle exercise.

I cannot recommend this book enough for anyone interested in why a large part of the South was what it was and is what it is. And, for those who think that they have the South of the early 20th century all figured out, prepare to have your beliefs challenged by some of the surprises offered by this book.

And isn't that a pretty good definition of a good book?

A huge book, covering the history of a huge river, a huge catstrophe, and the huge changes this affected politically, socially, and economically. From page one there is a sense of portending doom. Not simply the threatening flood, but the end of Delta society and the plantation system with all of its inconsistencies, patronages, its great and minor horrors.

The Mississippi was everything, the only thing. It influenced all who lived around or near it: the fabulously wealthy and cultured, and the greater lot of those who were dirt poor, downtrodden, exploited, expendable, mistreated. It molded lives for better or for worse, created fortunes and misfortune, resisted those who tried to tame it ~ the dreamers, the geniuses, the profiteers, the adventurers, the idealists, the men of science, of politics and power, some honorable, others less than so.

RISING TIDE is more than a detailed history of the rise of the Deep South, it delves into its convoluted inner workings, its darkest, meannest, most sorrowful chapters, and its brilliant, shining hours. Steeped with the steaminess of a Delta summer, infused with the power of a river so large, so wild it refuted science, engineering and technology, RT represents the best of what nonfiction has to offer.

This is really several fine books in one, telling the story of two rampant egoists of the 19th century abd their quarrel over the control of the Mississsippi, the story of the Percy family and the Mississippi delta, the flood of 1927, the rescue effort, the betrayal of the blacks, the "rescue" of New Orleans at the expense of its neighbors, the impact on our politics and on the career of Herbert Hoover. This is a kind of history that is seldom written, telling of a period usually glossed over as the jazz age.