Katrina: After the Flood

Katrina: After the Flood

One of New York Timesâ‚¬s 100 Notable Books of the Year, 2015
One of NPRâ‚¬s Best Books of 2015

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisianaâ‚¬"on August 29, 2005â‚¬"journalist Gary Rivlin traces the stormâ‚¬s immediate damage, the city of New Orleansâ‚¬s efforts to rebuild itself, and the stormâ‚¬s lasting effects not just on the cityâ‚¬s geography and infrastructureâ‚¬"but on the psychic, racial, and social fabric of one of this nationâ‚¬s great cities.

Much of New Orleans still sat under water the first time Gary Rivlin glimpsed the city after Hurricane Katrina. Then a staff reporter for The New York Times, he was heading into the city to survey the damage. The Interstate was eerily empty. Soldiers in uniform and armed with assault rifles stopped him. Water reached the eaves of houses for as far as the eye could see.

Four out of every five housesâ‚¬"eighty percent of the cityâ‚¬s housing stockâ‚¬"had been flooded. Around that same proportion of schools and businesses were wrecked. The weight of all that water on the streets cracked gas and water and sewer pipes all around town and the deluge had drowned almost every power substation and rendered unusable most of the cityâ‚¬s water and sewer system.

People living in flooded areas of the city could not be expected to pay their property taxes for the foreseeable future. Nor would all those boarded-up businessesâ‚¬"21,000 of the cityâ‚¬s 22,000 businesses were still shuttered six months after the stormâ‚¬"be contributing their share of sales taxes and other fees to the cityâ‚¬s coffers. Six weeks after the storm, the city laid off half its workforceâ‚¬"precisely when so many people were turning to its government for help. Meanwhile, cynics both in and out of the Beltway were questioning the use of taxpayer dollars to rebuild a city that sat mostly below sea level. How could the city possibly come back?

This book traces the stories of New Orleanians of all stripesâ‚¬"politicians and business owners, teachers and bus drivers, poor and wealthy, black and whiteâ‚¬"as they confront the aftermath of one of the great tragedies of our age and reconstruct, change, and in some cases abandon a city thatâ‚¬s the soul of this nation.
Country USA
Brand Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer Simon & Schuster
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2015-08-11
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781451692228

Country	USA
Brand	Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2015-08-11
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781451692228

Katrina: After the Flood

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