City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807132845 ISBN 13: 9780807132845

Publisher: LSU Press, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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

About the Author:

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington, D.C.–based organization that does investigative reporting and research on public policy issues. Since 1990, the Center has released more than 300 investigative reports and fifteen books. It has received the prestigious George Polk Award and more than twenty other awards from national organizations, including PEN USA, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0807132845
• ISBN 13: 9780807132845
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184
• Editor: Integrity Center For Public