There are a couple of new books out on Katrina reviewed by the New York Times.
An excerpt.
New York Times
July 9, 2006
Hurricane Katrina Books by Douglas Brinkley and Jed Horne
Hell and High Water
Review by DAVID OSHINSKY
When Hurricane Katrina reached the coastal town of Buras, La., on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, there was no mistaking its power. Starting as a tropical depression, it had first made landfall near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., feeding on the moisture-rich Everglades as it headed west into the Gulf of Mexico. By Saturday, Aug. 27, Katrina's fierce winds and plummeting barometric pressure had served notice of its deadly intent. That evening, Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center warned the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, that his city was in peril. "He said, 'Mr. Mayor, I've never seen a storm like this,' " Nagin recalled, adding, "Max scared the crap out of me."
Hurricanes draw strength from warm, open water, making the gulf an ideal host. Camille in 1969 packed winds of nearly 190 miles per hour; the Galveston hurricane of 1900, America's deadliest natural disaster, killed more than 8,000 people. Recently, as gulf waters have become even warmer, the storms have grown larger and more intense. Katrina would pummel an area the size of Britain — 90,000 square miles.
The hurricane hit Buras with a storm surge two stories high before moving north toward New Orleans, 63 miles away. In its path were the vanishing wetlands that serve to buffer inland communities from an onrushing storm. As it reached the city's edge, Katrina veered eastward, sparing New Orleans a direct hit as it closed in on the Mississippi coast. Though windows popped from buildings and power went out, there was a moment when it seemed that New Orleans had dodged a bullet. And then, as the sun reappeared, the water began to rise.
In his preface to "The Great Deluge," Douglas Brinkley writes, "My hope is that this history, fast out of the gates, may serve as an opening effort in Katrina scholarship." He needn't worry. A prolific author, known for publishing at breakneck speed, Brinkley has put his skills to good use by interviewing hundreds of Katrina survivors, disaster responders and public officials, and then weaving their disparate stories into a seamless narrative of the hurricane's momentous first week. It's a microhistory, logging in at more than 700 pages, but its thick detail provides a ground-level view of human behavior far richer than the breathless news reports that stunned and shamed the nation in the summer of 2005.
