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In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.
First came the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States -- 150-mile-per-hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces.
Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest domestic refugee crisis since the Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, as debris and sewage coursed through the streets, and whole towns in south-eastern Louisiana ceased to exist.
And third, the human tragedy of government mis-management, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself. Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, implemented an evacuation plan that favored the rich and healthy. Kathleen Blanco, governor of Louisiana, dithered in the most important aspect of her job: providing leadership in a time of fear and confusion. Michael C. Brown, the FEMA director, seemed more concerned with his sartorial splendor than the specter of death and horror that was taking New Orleans into its grip.
In The Great Deluge, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley, a New Orleans resident and professor of history at Tulane University, rips the story of Katrina apart and relates what the Category 3 hurricane was like from every point of view. The book finds the true heroes -- such as Coast Guard officer Jimmy Duckworth and hurricane jock Tony Zumbado.
Throughout the book, Brinkley lets the Katrina survivors tell their own stories, masterly allowing them to record the nightmare that was Katrina. The Great Deluge investigates the failure of government at every level and breaks important new stories. Packed with interviews and original research, it traces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed the Katrina disaster to devastate the Gulf Coast.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, writer Douglas Brinkley was forced to evacuate his home along with scores of his fellow New Orleans residents. Now the New York Times best-selling author of The Boys of Pointe du Hoc and Tour of Duty tells the complete tale of the terrible storm.
Through detailed research and interviews with survivors, Brinkley investigates the failure of government at every level to manage this devastating tragedy. He also explains the political, social, and economic factors that led to the breakdown of the New Orleans levee system, particularly how the Mississippi Gulf Coast was never properly rebuilt after Hurricane Camille in 1969. Douglas Brinkley is professor of history and director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Tulane University. Four of his books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His last three historical narratives, Tour of Duty, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc and Parish Priest were all New York Times best-sellers. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair and American Heritage, he lives in New Orleans with his wife, Anne, and their two children, Benton and Johnny. “... 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.”— New York Times Book Review
