The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast [Paperback]

Douglas Brinkley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 31, 2007

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. But it was only the first stage of a shocking triple tragedy. On the heels of one of the three strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the United States came the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half-million homes—followed by the human tragedy of government mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself.

In The Great Deluge, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley finds the true heroes of this unparalleled catastrophe, and lets the survivors tell their own stories, masterly allowing them to record the nightmare that was Katrina.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Tulane University, lived through the destruction of Hurricane Katrina with his fellow New Orleans residents, and now in The Great Deluge he has written one of the first complete accounts of that harrowing week, which sorts out the bewildering events of the storm and its aftermath, telling the stories of unsung heroes and incompetent officials alike. Get a sample of his story--and clarify your own memories--by looking through the detailed timeline he has put together of the preparation, the hurricane, and the response to one of the worst disasters in American history.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Historian Brinkley (Tour of Duty, etc.) opens his detailed examination of the awful events that took place on the Gulf Coast late last summer by describing how a New Orleans animal shelter began evacuating its charges at the first notice of the impending storm. The Louisiana SPCA, Brinkley none too coyly points out, was better prepared for Katrina than the city of New Orleans. It's groups like the SPCA, as well as compassionate citizens who used their own resources to help others, whom Brinkley hails as heroes in his heavy, powerful account"and, unsurprisingly, authorities like Mayor Ray Nagin, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and former FEMA director Michael C. Brown whom he lambastes most fiercely. The book covers August 27 through September 3, 2005, and uses multiple narrative threads, an effect that is disorienting but appropriate for a book chronicling the helter-skelter environment of much of New Orleans once the storm had passed, the levees had been breached, and the city was awash in "toxic gumbo." Naturally outraged at the damage wrought by the storm and worsened by the ill-prepared authorities, Brinkley, a New Orleans resident, is generally levelheaded, even when reporting on Brown's shallow e-mails to friends while "the trapped were dying" or recounting heretofore unreported atrocities, such as looters defecating on property as a mark of empowerment. Photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061148490
• ISBN-13: 978-0061148491
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (140 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #722,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Douglas Brinkley is currently a Professor of History at Rice University and a Fellow at the James Baker III Institute of Public Policy. He completed his bachelor's degree at Ohio State University and received his doctorate in U.S. Diplomatic History from Georgetown University in 1989. He then spent a year at the U.S. Naval Academy and Princeton University teaching history. While a professor at Hofstra University, Dr. Brinkley spearheaded the American Odyssey course, in which he took students on numerous cross-country treks where they visited historic sites and met seminal figures in politics and literature. Dr. Brinkley's 1994 book, The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey chronicled his first experience teaching this innovative on-the-road class which became the progenitor to C-SPAN's Yellow School Bus.

Five of Dr. Brinkley's books have been selected as New York Times "Notable Books of the Year": Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years(1992), Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, with Townsend Hoopes (1992), The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House (1998), Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress (2003), and The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006).

Five of his most recent publications have become New York Times best-sellers: The Reagan Diaries, (2007), The Great Deluge (2006), The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005), Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (2004) and Voices of Valor: D-Day: June 6, 1944 with Ronald J. Drez (2004). The Great Deluge (2006), was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book award.

Before coming to Rice, Dr. Brinkley served as Professor of History and Director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. From 1994 until 2005 he was Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. During his tenure there he wrote two books with the late Professor Ambrose: Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (1997) and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002). On the literary front, Dr. Brinkley has edited Jack Kerouac's diaries, Hunter S. Thompson's letters and Theodore Dreiser's travelogue. His work on civil rights includes Rosa Parks (2000) and the forthcoming Portable Civil Rights Reader.

He won the Benjamin Franklin Award for The American Heritage History of the United States (1998) and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot (1993). He was awarded the Business Week Book of the Year Award for Wheels for the World and was also named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. He has received honorary doctorates from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Dr. Brinkley is contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review and American Heritage. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly, he is also a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Club. In a recent profile, the Chicago Tribune deemed him "America's new past master."

Forthcoming publications include The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the crusade for America and a biography of Walter Cronkite.

He lives in Austin and Houston, Texas with his wife and three children.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

125 of 137 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Deluge: Emotional, powerful, and comprehensive history of Hurricane Katrina and its impact.. May 12, 2006

By A. G. Corwin

Format:Hardcover

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore into Louisiana and Mississippi much as Hurricane Andrew did to Florida over a decade earlier, wreaking devastation across the Gulf Coast. As one eyewitness is quoted, "the hurricane was like watching God and the Devil fighting...with Godzilla as referee." Aside from the massive destruction, the storm also ripped open social, economic, and political divisions nationwide and became a media spectacle impossible to forget. Tulane professor and historian Douglas Brinkley, well known for his histories Boys of Pointe Du Hoc and Tour of Duty and a native of New Orleans, delivers the first comprehensive and detailed analysis of the disaster, moving from politician to police, rescuer to rooftops.

Brinkley weaves together a gripping narrative of stories at all levels of the disaster. Analyzing the days prior to landfall, Brinkley details the multiple factors that merged together to produce the "perfect storm" that so devastated the region. The warnings from the National Hurricane Center were coming fast and furious, the danger clearly portrayed, but still people waited to leave. He faults the major political players like Mayor Ray Nagin, Governer Blanco, and Mississippi Governer Barbour for delaying mandatory evacuation orders and having no comprehensive evacuation plan in place to remove those who didn't have transportation, mainly the poor and elderly. Nagin receives an especially critical eye, as does the the New Orleans Police Department. Leaving no stone unturned, Brinkley hits the politicians in FEMA, DHS, and in Washington for their failures to understand the seriousness of the storm's impact and react accordingly. In doing so, Brinkley acts with the critical eye of a historian rather than of partisan politics. In this story no politician is a hero. Brinkley's admiration is for the men and women of the Coast Guard, the NOLA homeboys, the Cajun Navy, and the other ordinary Americas who took part in the relief effort.

Having experienced the horrors of Katrina first hand in the city of New Orleans gives Brinkley's writing a perspective unmatched by current scholarship and media. When he discusses the flood waters rising, the streets slowly sinking under a brown wave, and the misery of the people stuck in it, he is speaking from first hand experience. Brinkley was there from beginning to end, suffering through the storm with other residents, taking part in rescue efforts, and recording the stories that would make up a big part of this book. Though he does not discuss his personal experience, his perspective gives the book an instant credibility and lends weight to his analysis of what went right and what went wrong. There are moments when his survivor's anger competes with the historian's judgement, but that emotion gives the narrative its power.

Having been written in under a year there are sure to be elements of the story that are left untold, much to Brinkley's regret as he notes in the introduction. In later years when more government documents are realized, and more interviews are conducted, he will hopefully release an updated edition. For now though, this is THE book of Katrina. Brinkley writes smoothly and with an elegance that moves the narrative at a fast pace. The Great Deluge is so gripping a story that it reads almost as fiction; its easy to forget that it all happened, live and in color, in front of an entire nation. Brinkley delivers an emotional and powerful story of danger, disaster, and survival that is sure to become one of the definitive works on the subject, and is a book that is important for everyone to read. Highly recommended, one of the Top 5 books of the year.

A.G. Corwin
St. Louis, MO

81 of 97 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars TRUTH WITHOUT AN AGENDA May 12, 2006

By Tim Janson HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

"The Great Deluge : Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast" certainly pulls no punches in its across the board criticism of all concerned parties. While most at the time turned this into a societal battle of rich vs. poor, white vs. black, Author Douglas Brinkley has more than enough ammunition to aim at President Bush, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, Michael Brown, the former FEMA director, Mayor Ray Nagin, and Governor Blanco. In fact a war of words has erupted between Brinkley and Nagin in light of some of the comments Brinkley makes about Nagin.

Some of Brinkleys accounts needlessly border on the melodramatic. There was no extra drama that needed to be added to the actual and factual accounts of what happened to New Orleans. The human tragedy speaks for itself. Readers will experience many layers of feelings as they read the book. You'll shed tears over the loss of life, be angered by the poor response from all factions, and rejoice in the triumph of spirit in how the people endured, and how hard rescuers worked.

Brinkley successfully avoids falling into politicizing this disaster and no one who reads the book thoughtfully can accuse him of having an agenda other than wanting to tell the true story. Thankfully he is smart enough to let so many of those directly involved...the survivors...and the rescuers...tell their own stories. The various running narratives, and 700 plus pages can make it a bit of a chore at times to follow but this is a story that needed to be told and told truthfully.

40 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars New Orleans Filmmaker Concurs with Many Accounts in Book May 11, 2006

By Stephen R. Rue

Format:Hardcover

I have been filming a documentary regarding Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath entitled "New Orleans Story." We interviewed Mr. Brinkley when he was writing his very first chapter of The Great Deluge. Douglas was very engaged in the investagative process and was eager to learn all that we had discovered and were discovering during our one on one interviews with key players to this historical disaster. We also interviewed Douglas Brinkley a few days before he released his book to the public.

Having now read the book, I must verify through our own on-camera interviews with many of the same individucals (such as Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, former Fema Director Michael Brown), that Douglas' reported accounts have merit. The information was taken directly from those who were in the best position to opine. Yes it is true that others have different perspectives, but we have yet to see any evidence that dispute the accruracy of the content of The Great Deluge.

As a fellow New Orleanian who also worked to chronical the events in as much of a contemporaneous manner as possible, I wish to congradulate Douglas Brinkley on his efforts. I further strongly recommend The Great Deluge.