The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History

The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, drowning crops and displacing more than half a million people across seven states. It was also the first environmental disaster to be experienced virtually on a mass scale. The Flood Year 1927 draws from newspapers, radio broadcasts, political cartoons, vaudeville, blues songs, poetry, and fiction to show how this event provoked an intense and lasting cultural response. Americans at first seemed united in what Herbert Hoover called a "great relief machine," but deep rifts soon arose. Southerners, pointing to faulty federal levee design, decried the attack of Yankee water. The condition of African American evacuees prompted comparisons to slavery from pundits like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. And environmentalists like Gifford Pinchot called the flood "the most colossal blunder in civilized history." Susan Scott Parrish examines how these and other key figuresâ€•from entertainers Will Rogers, Miller & Lyles, and Bessie Smith to authors Sterling Brown, William Faulkner, and Richard Wrightâ€•shaped public awareness and collective memory of the event. The crises of this period that usually dominate historical accounts are war and financial collapse, but The Flood Year 1927 allows us to assess how mediated environmental disasters became central to modern consciousness.
Country USA
Brand Princeton University Press
Manufacturer Princeton University Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780691182940
ReleaseDate 2018-12-04
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780691182940

Country	USA
Brand	Princeton University Press
Manufacturer	Princeton University Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780691182940
ReleaseDate	2018-12-04
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780691182940

The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History

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