The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and t… (2025)

I think parts of this book should be assigned to social studies students, because it so clearly shows the significance of electing competent and talented officials to the offices of government. Rarely have the costs of having the wrong people in power been so starkly illustrated: as I think we all agree, Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, but its horrific aftermath in New Orleans was the result of mindblowing incompetence at nearly every level of government, from the city right up through the Feds. Reading the first few chapters -- definitely the best part of this overly long book -- would help students to understand the true purpose and challenges of government. Brinkley pulls no punches here, and makes clear from the outset that he's not playing the blame game; that is, it's not a game, his blaming is serious business, and Brinkley points furious accusatory fingers at nearly every official and agency charged with preventing the nightmare in post-Katrina New Orleans.

In addition to illustrating the functions and process of government, this book would also be a good thing for young people to read because it could challenge them to think about what kind of adults they want to become. I know that sounds pretty corny, but it's true. There are billions of cliches about how one's mettle is truly tested in times of great crisis, and much of what makes Katrina stories so fascinating is evidence of that point. People's behavior after the storm ranged the gamut from intense moral depravity, to pathetic blundering, to incredible heroism. While reading this book, I broke down in tears probably about twenty times, usually at some sickening travesty of government, but a few times at people's inspiring and selfless actions. Again, not to sound like an Oprah guest or anything, but reading this made me think about what kind of person I want to be, and challenged me to question whether I'll be able to rise to the occasion when certain demands are made. I think this is good stuff to think about once in awhile.

This book had a lot of information in it, and I'm impressed that Brinkley was able to collect and publish it so quickly (this came out in 2006). That said, I kind of wish I'd done some research first to look for another Katrina book I might've liked more. For one thing, this book was 624 pages long, and by the time I was done, I felt like I'd just spent five days at the Superdome, waiting for some FEMA buses that just didn't arrive. To be sure, there was a lot of reporting to do on the many shocking events that occurred, and normally I like long books, so I didn't think going in that this would be a problem.... but it kind of was. Douglas Brinkley -- and I say this with due respect, because his work is obviously an achievement, and I learned a lot from it --is no Robert Caro. That is to say, he's not, in my humble opinion, a terrific writer. Obviously he had to get this baby out as quickly as possible, so its unlovely prose can't fairly be faulted much, but it did make the reading feel pretty excruciating after awhile. For example, in describing the trauma symptoms of Mississippi Gulf Coast hurricane victims, Brinkley writes, "They were frayed zombies, Katrina survivors, in search of a hug" (p. 163).... In search of a hug? Huh? Yikes. There were many non sequiturs and somewhat bizarre comparisons and references scattered throughout. Nothing offensive, just.... not great. And for a book this long, well, it really helps if the writing's great. Maybe if I weren't also reading The Power Broker this wouldn't have bothered me so much but... well, it was long.

But yeah, again, this book is an achievement. It taught me a lot I didn't know about Katrina, and I wasn't reading it for the prose. That said, I also wasn't reading it to learn what Richard Ford, Wynton Marsalis, or Jimmy Buffett happened to think about the destruction of a city to which they had one or another personal connection. I became very frustrated by what felt like excessive anecdotes from figures only tangentially linked to the disaster, and by the folksiness Brinkley imparted to his descriptions of various involved actors. Again, though, this is all fine; what was not fine, however, was the unconscionable omission of any MAP OF NEW ORLEANS. This failure is analogous to Ray Nagin's decision to leave all the school buses parked in a flood zone, and to the city's failure to coordinate with Amtrak so that five "ghost trains" left the bowl Sunday evening, empty of people. How could Brinkley have provided such a helpful timeline of events between August 27 and September 3, but not have managed to put even ONE simple map showing the relative location of the various New Orleans neighborhoods he was discussing? That was actually my biggest problem with this book. Yeah, I know it sounds petty, and I should just be able to find a good map online, but actually, I can't. There's the Time magazine map that shows the flooding, and of course there's Google Maps, but I want one inside the book, designed to help me understand exactly what he's talking about, so I can see where the Lower Ninth Ward is, and where the 17th Street Canal was breached, and how far the Superdome is from the Convention Center, and just things like that I need to know because I, like FEMA, was totally clueless about the geography of New Orleans going into this. I kept flipping through looking for the missing map, like a stranded family on a roof searching the sky for helicopters, up until I finished the book, unable to believe that it had been left out. So thank God for the Internet, but still: a book like this should be self-contained, and it didn't make sense without a map. The pictures were great, which only made its maplessness more incomprehensible to me.

Okay, so but my tendency is to complain even more about something when I like it. I think this is a pretty good book. If it had had a map, I would've given it four stars. Every American should read at least parts of this book, or a similar one. Although I followed the print media coverage at the time, the most shocking content related here was unknown to me. As noted previously, this book made me break down in tears on the train repeatedly. Due to incompetence and an unforgivable lack of urgency and coordination, thousands of mostly poor, mostly black Americans were left to suffer, and even die, unnecessarily. Racism obviously played a large role in what happened (the story of the Gretna Bridge Incident, recounted here, is one particularly shameful episode), but it is a just one part of this gruesome story. What I did not really understand at the time is that government agencies did not only fail through their inaction, but in fact ACTIVELY exacerbated the situation through actions that actually appear malevolent and designed to do harm. Decades of poor policy and neglect made New Orleans's environment and infrastructure such that the breached levees and resulting chaos were inevitable, and nobody in power ever bothered to establish a real disaster plan. Once the hurricane came, political leaders engaged in infighting, grandstanding, and lack of resolve in their mishandling of the emergency. Pathological bureaucracy meant that first responders were forcibly turned away by agencies PURPOSELY KEEPING AID OUT of the city. When the federal government finally began to react, like a brontosaurus just noticing a blow to the tail struck three days earlier, FEMA sent firefighters to Atlanta for sexual harassment training, before they could go to New Orleans to evacuate people whose lives were in danger. Families were separated, with children and infants being taken from their mothers willy nilly, and survivors were ordered around at gunpoint by people who did not seem to be following much of a plan. Many of the frail and elderly died because some people who were supposed to be doing their jobs didn't do them; of course, many were saved because others did rise heroically to the occasion. Brinkley documents that, doing a pretty good job of walking the line between despair and hope at humanity's capacity for good and bad, which is why I think this would be a good book for high school kids. Also, it's got a lot of dead bodies and violence and looting and excitement in it, and teenagers like that kind of thing, don't they?

I wish this country'd get its act together, that's for sure. At the time that this happened, I felt like Katrina had turned over a rock and exposed the racialized poverty endemic in this often ignored America I was glad at the time was finally making the news. I remember being excited that newscasters were actually getting angry about racial and economic injustice. The real outrage, I thought, was not just the federal government's slow response to the hurricane, as it was that so many New Orleanians were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to, because they were so poor. Brinkley's perspective here was different than mine. He took a very nonpartisan, even apolitical approach that looked specifically at what went wrong in this situation, and whose responsibility the snafus were. I find it totally incomprehensible that Ray Nagin was reelected after this. My biggest impression at the end of this book was of the meaning of responsibility. Brinkley goes very hard on a lot of these officials, which I appreciated. Not only public officials, but all of us, in whatever capacity, need to perform above and beyond the call of duty at times of crisis, and the more responsibility we have, the greater our abilities must be. When high school civics students read this book, I want them to think, "Well, I thought I wanted to be mayor/governor/president, but now that I think about it, I'd probably be better suited as a soap opera star or professional soccer player." If more kids would think about what public service actually means, maybe tragedies like the aftermath of Katrina could be averted in the future.

*WARNING! A COMPLETELY REASONABLE AMOUNT OF CURSE WORDS, CONSIDERING THE TOPIC, ARE CONTAINED IN THE FOLLOWING REVIEW*

I had a vague understanding of what went down in New Orleans after Katrina hit, but after finishing this powerhouse history lesson by Brinkley, I realize I didn't know shit. I mean, what the fuck. Every other page filled me with disbelief. I can't even begin to establish all of the factors that led to all the destruction, mismanagement, neglect, and chaos. Factors such as the lack of preservation of Louisiana's wetlands, which used to serve as a natural buffer for hurricanes coming off the Gulf, but have all since disappeared due to their lucrative natural resources (think natural gas, oil companies, etc). Ya know what, I can't even list the stuff. It's just too much. Brinkley has done a great service to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to present this astonishing piece of American history. As angry and disgusted as Brinkley can come off at times (understandably), he gives equal parts of the narrative over to the first responders and citizen heroes of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Brinkley's beef is clearly with Mayor Nagin, Gov. Blanco, Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff of FEMA, some of the NOPD, and the Bush Administration. Basically, everyone who should have done something, were trusted to do something, and failed. I look forward to when Brinkley to turns his angry tongue on BP.

Please, please, don't be scared of this book. I know it's long and you might be tempted to label it as 'depressing' or maybe you've had enough of Hurricane Katrina, but The Great Deluge highlights a crucial moment in American history, and five years later, it's still worth examining. Also, God, if you can hear me, Please leave the Gulf Coast alone. We get it. You're not a fan. Now just knock it off. You know who has had it easy for a long time? Vermont. Nothing bad ever happens to Vermont. Go pick on them.

Quotes:

"The fact that the federal response could have been better, starting at the moment the hurricane struck, begs the questions: Under what circumstances could it have been better? If the victims were white? If they were rich? If they had not been members of a voting bloc that the Republican Party had a motive to disperse? The one that rings truest, though, is that cronyism riddled FEMA and its contractors in the Bush administration, making incompetence and not racism the key to the response." pg. 618

"Too much bureaucracy can be a big, big problem in a catastrophe." pg. 578,
Lt. Jimmy Duckworth of the Coast Guard

"A political lesson had been learned [in 2004:], one that unfortunately wouldn't help the Gulf South in 2005: it's best to have a natural disaster in the heat of campaign season, when your state [Florida:] is up for grabs during a presidential election year...'Partisan politics were certainly in the air during the busy 2004 hurricane season.'" pg. 249

An outstanding review of the Katrina disaster. Plenty of blame to spread around: Governor Blanco, Mayor Nagin, the NOPD. Too much blame perhaps on FEMA director Brown, probably because of the "Helluva job, Brownie" comment made by President Bush, who deserves a lot of blame. One guy that got off too easy was Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security. Many don't realize FEMA was under his control. Race enters the picture, as does poverty. Remember when we thought finally America would fight poverty? Now we are going in the opposite direction again.

And here's a personal comment. The Republican party thrives on government failure. So even if a Republican fails, it helps other anti-government Republicans. A winning plan.

One way we are all responsible is our failure to fight climate change and environmental degradation. Folks, the worst is yet to come.

Apparently the only people able to get their heads out of their asses were the United States Coast Guard, the 'Cajun Navy', and Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. Here's a chilling quote from a reporter and former swift boat pilot who helped out:

"The water didn't remind me of Vietnam," he said. "The dying did. Knowing people were dying and hearing stories and talking to people who were in the process of dying, who were going to die as soon as we hung up. That reminded me a lot of Vietnam. When the people came out with me from our studio to the flooded cars, they were hysterical or shocked. I felt extremely calm. Vietnam. When the windows were blowing out (and I'm afraid of heights if you put me on a ladder), I wasn't afraid. I was calm. Vietnam. I think it was thirteen months of combat, and if you lose control, if you get emotional or you get afraid or too brave or just don't stay calm and think and be relaxed, you're going to die. So Vietnam was a gigantic plus. It comes back to the fact that I have been to a bad place. I had that bad place to go back to, that helped me remain calm enough to get the job done...I had seen the birds disappear before."

Douglas Brinkley holds nothing back in this fabulous account of what really happened in New Orleans during Katrina. We all saw the TV footage, which was heartbreaking. In this book you hear the victims full stories and they will break your heart all over again. Brinkley also rips into the ineptitude of those who should have been helping. Starting with Mayor, hiding on the 27th floor of a hotel, all the way up to Homeland Security and the President, who dawdled and twiddled their thumbs while New Orleans drowned.

The book, a tomb at 768 pages, also tells you the stories of the every day hero-the people that stepped up when they did not have to. The band of wealthy who banded together and became "The Cajun Navy". These folks took their boats into the areas no one else would go, and rescued hundreds of people who may have died without their effort.

This was a really hard book to finish at this point in life-too much of it reminded me of the current situation with this pandemic and the ineptitude of one of the worlds super powers to organize and help it's people.

So disappointing.

I wanted to read just one good book on Katrina, which after all was the greatest disaster to befall an American city in almost a hundred years. Seems important to know about, so I looked around. This book got the most praise, the most awards, and the most blurbs, so I gave it a chance.

Besides being light on facts and heavy on judgmental analysis, the main problem with the book is that Brinkley seems eerily compelled to relate the life story of every single one of the hundreds of people he interviews. So we get two or three pages about the college life and military career of a Gulf Coast sheriff, and then two or three pages about a Coast Guard rescuer's career, then two or three pages on the life of a worker at the animal shelter. The book is just polluted with irrelevant and boring side-stories of people who have absolutely no relation to each other besides being in the general Gulf Coast area when Katrina hit. I simply couldn't plow through it all.

Still, some worthwhile takeaways: It was good to see New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin get a drubbing, especially after all the premature praise he got for shouting about chaos during radio interviews right after the hurricane. The problem was that he simply waited far too long to call a mandatory evacuation of the city, not until the day before the storm actually, and even then he didn't use the city buses to pick up stragglers. Also, "Brownie" was just as bad as he is usually portrayed, but I had no idea he also extensively lied on his resume before getting the top FEMA job, and people had been calling for his head at least a year before the storm. The fact that FEMA spent a significant amount of its resources actually preventing "unauthorized" assistance from coming into the city is truly astounding.

Still, there's got to be a general history better than this.

Well I'm finally throwing in the towel on this one! I'll admit I did not finish it but rather skim read from about p450 to the end.

Whilst no one can accuse Brinkley of not being thorough, there is just wayyyyyy too much information presented in this book to wade through. I totally understand that the author was trying to provide a minute to minute retelling of the disaster but it's easy to get completely bogged down in detail.

The take away points for me were these:

The infrastructure in New Orleans and the surrounding river areas is nowhere near adequate. Coastal living assumes you need to have completely robust measures in place for flooding and New Orleans just didn't.

Those in charge put profit over people. As long as New Orleans is making a profit, who cares right?

The Bush government didn't give two shits about their "people". The poor black communities were not Bush's concern and never would be.

There was an absolute failure in the physical and human systems in place to deal with natural disaster in the New Orleans area.

People died needlessly.

A very very thorough but ultimately over-detailed account of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

This comes highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more or visiting New Orleans. Unfortunately, my library only has the abridged version available on audiobook- with an awful narrator to boot. I'm DNFing that version at 67% and will likely pickup the full book at some point in the future.

I cannot finish this book, there are so many inaccuracies that I can't even get past the first 100 pages. I was utterly disgusted by the inaccuracies. This was written by a "History" professor who obviously doesn't know the history of New Orleans or its surrounding areas. In one section of the book he talks about how the levees were blown in 1927 at Caernarvon, Louisiana, then a few pages later says that the levee was blown in the Lower 9th Ward. There is STILL a crater where the levee was blown in Caernarvon because of rather large amount of explosives used. Had the levee been blown in the Lower 9th, there would have been flooding in Arabi and maybe Chalmette, and being that my family lived there at the time, I know for a fact that there WASN'T. He paints the Lower 9th as always being a black community when it had been some what diverse at one time and many residents moved to places like St. Bernard Parish and Jefferson. My best friend's father grew up in the Lower 9th and moved to St. Bernard in the early 70's as did many of his friends. The time line may be right, but his account of the history of the area is wrong. Something I find rather disgusting from a so called history professor. How hard is it to check your facts? Shouldn't some one who is an educator be teaching people things that are the truth rather than speculation and out right falsehoods? This is a shining example of why the U.S. fails at so much these days. Hurry up and put something out even if it's bad information just to cash in on the almighty dollar. Your integrity will remain intact because it's for the "greater good." BS. It's just laziness.

I have read three Katrina books so far. All have revolved around one small aspect of the bigger disaster namely hospitals and a nursing home. So with a long road trip ahead I decided it was a good time to pick up this book which covers the entire disaster at least the parts that took place in New Orleans and Mississippi. Overall it was a very readable account. We got to know many people affected by the disaster. From first responders to citizens like Diane Johnson. It gave a balanced view on who was to blame for the botched response to the disaster. Most either go right for Bush or "Brownie" who did a heck of a job apparently. But frankly everyone in power messed this up. Mayor Nagin is literally the worst. Refusing to call a mandatory evacuation, parking much needed buses where they flooded and were useless letting several trains that could've been used to evacuate go away empty. Then there's his cowardly behaviour after. Hiding out in a hotel refusing to meet with his people. The press went easy on him from what I remember. But he acted the worst of all of them. Wanting to look his best before meeting the president for a photo op really? Then there was Governor Blanco. She at least went to the Superdome and talked to people and tried to get things moving. Did she screw up? Oh yes she did but at least she showed some compassion. Can't believe Nagin got reelected after this mess. Of course the city lost half its population so maybe that's why. Bush was his usual idiotic self. I remember him as the incompetent leader who was at least very likeable unlike another president who would come along. But one thing I wish the author would've pointed out was when Bush said the storm took him by surprise the author said, McKinley wss also taken by suprise in 1900 with the Galveston hurricane. Well in 1900 they didn't have all the radar and other high tech data they had in 2005 when Katrina hit. Everyone knew this thing was coming and that it was a monster and I wish the author had called him out on that. A hurricane is projected to hit a city below sea level and it's a big one you know something bad is going to come out of that. You might not know how bad but it'll be pretty bad. Our friends from another book the Manganos appeared here and I really wish there was a non biased book about them. Seems like they lost funding to their home for a few years which was conviently left out of Flood of Lies. Infection control is extremely important when working with the elderly and I'm positive they did have transportation offered to get those people out but refused. Who knows why? I don't think they set out to kill those people but they certainly were negligent in their care of them. We get a snapshot of Memorial as well as a videographer searches through the place and finds all the bodies there. This book also goes beyond New Orleans into Mississippi with some of the most harrowing descriptions of the storm. You get to know a lot of the people involved including those who didn't make it. Some survived the storm only to succumb afterwards due to stress lack of oxygen or medication or even food and water. Others were taken as the storm hit or as the water hit their houses too quickly for them to react. Do not recommend reading this if you are feeling depressed cause it's just hit after hit frustration after frustration. The crime and looting also recieved mention. Several places refused to take survivors or refugees because of this. There was a heart breaking scene of a woman Charmaine Neville resting in the slightly cooler air of the roof of her shelter being raped. There were stories of cops shooting and killing people, the looting I have mixed feelings. In those circumstances I get looting for necessities like food, water and diapers or even medications, I might even go as far as clothing. But TVs? What the hell are you gonna do with that? There was a chapter devoted to shop keepers protecting their stores including a hardware store and an antique shop. Again what the hell are you going to do with a painting or a clock or even hardware? No one accused criminals of being smart at least these ones weren't. They were angry. I did find it interesting that in some cases gangs turned into heroes. Protecting children and older people at the convention centre and being a source of leadership and authority. I remember watching a docudrama once that said we are nine meals from anarchy and Katrina certainly proved that to be true. The storm certainly brought out the worst in humanity, but it also brought out the best, neighbours helping each other out, strangers supporting each other. This was a dark chapter in recent history but there was some good sprinkled in. Of course the racism issue reared up and frankly I agree that probably played a big factor in why no one cared about New Orleans. I know in this day and age we have the everything is racist constantly told to us but I can said from reading this book and my own memories of watching this disaster unfold this was definitely the case here. 90% of the people left were black, poor and undereducated. For once Kayne got it right when he said George Bush doesn't care about black people. With all that said this book was a bit too long. It was hard to forget who was who as we'd be introduced to someone and they'd pop up layer and you'd be like who? It did get bogged down with two many details and life histories. All I need to know is who they are and what they do, this person is a storm chaser, this guy runs a local bar short and simple. Otherwise it was a good overall view of this horrific tragedy.

Fascinating read. Hard to believe the USA let down so many of their citizens when we can come to the aid of so many countries in the world.
Wish there had been a map of the areas effected as I am not familiar with the regions. Getting out my atlas and checking the footnotes was tedious. Great historical read...now I may have to reread Issac's Storm again.

Listen, I’m not stupid, I knew sooner or later I was gonna have to mess around with that big storm they got over in Florence, figured I’d give this a read and see what all the fuss is about. Boring! Didn’t we do this last year? You think I’m gonna waste my time babysitting those pasta-eaters and let the wheels fall right off this investigation, you got another thing coming! But don’t worry folks, I got the situation covered. FLORENCE IS IN SAFE HANDS! I got Pete taking care of the hurricane thing as we speak, let everyone know he’s got full authority to act for me on this. Guy’s been in and out of meetings all day, what a trooper. I figure he knows his way around a mop and all that, this is more his kinda party than mine. Division of labor! Meantime I’m gonna really double down and find that fink agitator once and for all. I’m gettin’ real close, I can feel it. Someone around here is running scared, but it ain’t gonna do any good. Hurricane Donald is coming!

Pretty much as comprehensive as it gets. Well written and reports unbiased stories and facts - if you ever want to learn more about Katrina, the colossal failures of people who should have helped, and some amazing heroic stories, this covers it all. Because it is so comprehensive it is incredibly long, but worth the read for anyone who is interested!

The timeline given was helpful as to how things played out. Confirms for me that people need to rely on themselves and their communities in a natural disaster or otherwise. The government is not your savior. The stories of the Cajun Navy which I don’t think was named as such in the book, we’re prime examples of people pitching in and doing what What is needed and not waiting for help. The idea that the government hast to do a thing is preposterous. For the most part, states should take care of them selves. Nothing good comes of big government.

The book did seem to end sort of abruptly without much explanation of the reconstruction but I guess since the book was about the hurricane and subsequent disaster I guess then the rebuilding would be the subject of another book.

I think this would have been an even better book if it was longer. It focused more on the actions taken by the people in power during Katrina than the on-the-ground devastation.

I was horrified by how little the people who had the ability to help actually cared.

Very disturbing look at the immediate aftermath (the first week) of the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (with occasionally brief sidebars to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi). Time and again the incredible ineptitude, incompetence, pettiness, lack of concern for others, and preoccupation with looking good themselves defined the government officials whose jobs were to make sure that New Orleanians were taken care of to the best extent possible. Nobody who had responsibility (other than some brave National Guard and Coast Guard members) came out looking good.

Ray Nagin, the mayor, may have been the worst of the bunch. A leader AWOL, paranoid about his own safety and petrified to show his face in public. His behavior was despicable. He was a coward. Governor Kathleen Blanco meant well but was overwhelmed and did not effectively manage the crisis. She was too emotional and too concerned about states' rights at a time when she should have accepted whatever help was offered regardless of the parameters that came with it. President George W. Bush's astonishing lack of concern with the plight of the victims was a disgrace. He truly failed at this important moment: in my opinion, the single biggest blunder of his presidency (and that is saying something). While I do think that, deep down, he did care about the people, he actions and words ("You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie.") said otherwise. Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, came across as a dispassionate, too-busy-to-be-bothered bureaucrat who was amazingly out of touch with reality, should have been fired immediately for his dismal performance. And the same goes for Michael Brown, the embattled and completely ineffective director or FEMA. Brown was more concerned about how he looked on TV, and where he was going to eat dinner at in Baton Rouge, than with helping sick and dying people get evacuated out of New Orleans. These people honestly probably could not have performed their respective roles any worse than they did. I would be remiss if I did not mention the atrocious behavior of many New Orleans Police officers - some who stole Cadillacs and fled the city, others who openly threatened people for no apparent reason, and many who were just unresponsive to the needs of the citizens.

Plenty of blame to go around with regular New Orleanians as well thanks to many people who could have left prior to the storm hitting but intentionally chose to disregard the warning and instead decided to stay and "tough it out." The sick and elderly, of which there were many, who were physical unable to leave is a completely different story - and a sad one at that as nobody seemed to really care about them. Most disturbing to me of anything in the book is the depictions of the massive looting that took place throughout the city. Truly disgusting. People breaking into stores just because they could - they needed no other "reason" beyond that. And the fact that so many of them would defecate where they had looted, is repulsive. It reminds me animals trying to mark out their territory. My God, how revolting.

Brinkley kept the pace up, switching between stories of local heroes saving people (thankfully many, many everyday people in and out of New Orleans stepped things up and literally were life-savers to thousands of stranded people) and the bureaucratic mistakes and incompetence fouling up rescue efforts. I thought that, at times, Brinkley got too carried away with a certain person's story, over-dramatizing things as the story is based off their recollections and of course many people were probably engaging in a natural tendency to exaggerate their accomplishments. Also, he moves so quickly between talking about the political figures and the local, on-the-ground rescues, that it results in an uneven book (although I recognize that he was going by date, and not necessarily by a particular person's story).

The book was a very hard read for me, I was born and raised in Metairie, Louisiana, which is a suburb of New Orleans. I worked at Southern Baptist Hospital, known as Memorial Medical Center, for over seven years. I worked for Charity Hospital -- University Hospital -- right after nursing school. I have very fond memories of these places. My husband and I moved away from the area in 1997 due to his work. I know people who were affected by Katrina and their lives will never be the same. I wanted a real timeline to understand what happened during Katrina. I asked for it and I got it. I applaud Douglas Brinkley on a job well done. New Orleans and the outlining areas was greatly affected by Hurricane Katrina and will never be the same. I hope that the lessons that were learned thru this horrible incident will never have to be repeated.

I've been looking for a comprehensive book explaining the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and finally found it! (Zeitoun was not) At more than 600 pages, it's a big boy, but I feel thoroughly educated about what and how it happened, and overall found it riveting. Interesting to read this during hurricane season with New Orleans flooded again..

First published on May 1, 2006, "The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast," by Douglas Brinkley, is a masterpiece of nonfiction. This book is incredibly thorough, informative, and ruthless in its unflinching journalism. "The Great Deluge" was tremendously painful to read. I cried a lot. I sure learned a lot. I absolutely love this book.

In late March/early April, 2019, I took my first (and so far, only) trip to New Orleans to attend the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. Having never been to Louisiana before, I felt like a giant sponge, taking everything in. New Orleans is such an amazing, beautiful place. But some brutal facts were just inescapable. In New Orleans, most of the white-collar, affluent people are white, and most of the blue-collar, working-class people are Black. At the literary festival, almost all of the attendees were white. Almost all of the people serving the attendees were Black.

At one event, I was able to hear the Pulitzer-Prize winning author Michael Cunningham speak (best known for his 1998 novel, "The Hours," which was turned into an award-winning film). At another event, a local author hosting a writers' workshop engaged the audience in a Q&A session. Most of the audience members were residents of New Orleans who lived in the affluent neighborhoods (which are predominantly white). The event was held in the French Quarter, a neighborhood most popular for the city's tourism industry. When members of the audience were asked about misconceptions "the larger public" has about New Orleans, several people answered with irritation: "they just think of Katrina" (which occurred on August 29, 2005). Many people nodded, and one person vehemently said, "People need to forget about Katrina. New Orleans is more than Katrina." This proclamation was met with even more vigorous nodding, and even some applause.

The service workers at this event, however, had a completely different worldview. Not only were these people -- who were working for minimum wage -- still *very much* thinking about Katrina and its impacts on their lives, but three different working-class people I spoke with actually believed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had dynamited the levies and flooded the Lower Ninth Ward on purpose, in order to kill the poor.

The information sent me reeling. HAD the levies been dynamited? I honestly didn't know. I did know one thing for certain: the affluent white people of New Orleans, and the working poor of New Orleans, live in two very, very different realities.

My friend Blair loaned me her copy of "The Great Deluge" to read, and thank goodness she did, because this book is profoundly on the side of the people whose lives were devastated by Katrina, and speaks loudly, emphatically, for all of the people who were disgusted and outraged by the complete government failure of helping storm victims in the aftermath. "The Great Deluge" is a blistering examination of what went wrong, and why, and why the government response was so inept, cruel, and cataclysmic.

I know with full certainty now that the levies failed on their own; they were not dynamited. But the fact that I met multiple people in New Orleans who believe they were dynamited is a sign of a huge class divide.

It took me a long time to read "The Great Deluge." Every time Brinkley noted his source material in the text, I would look it up online, and read the articles and opinion pieces he quoted from or referenced. I watched several Frontline documentaries about Katrina, and other context pieces available on YouTube. "The Great Deluge" is a very long book, and all of the extra reading I did around it made the process of reading the book even longer.

It was time well spent.

When I think back on the writers' workshop I attended, in which affluent white city residents wanted the broader United States to "forget about Katrina," I feel such a mix of emotions, none of them good. As a Louisiana outsider, a white Coloradoan who *does* associate New Orleans with Katrina, I know I was one of the people the affluent city residents in that room strongly dislike.

But after reading "The Great Deluge," I think that's a good thing. I hope to God we don't ever forget Katrina. I hope to God we don't ever forget that it was a massive human tragedy that was 100% preventable. I hope we don't ever forget that the people who died in the highest numbers were the poor: especially the elderly poor and the disabled poor. Especially Black people who were poor.

I hope we never forget that the United States is a place of systemic inequality, and our national shortcomings were profoundly on display when we failed to evacuate people from the city, and then failed to help them after the city flooded.

I hope we don't ever forget that the survivors of Katrina were horribly traumatized, and the reality of that trauma still reside in the minds and bodies of those people today.

A huge thanks to Blair for loaning me this book.

Douglas Brinkley, and everyone who helped Douglas Brinkley research this book, are a national treasure. "The Great Deluge" is one of the best books I've ever read. It's certainly one of the most important.

Five million stars. Highly recommended.

Hugely impressive reporting. Best book on Katrina I've read so far.

This is a great overview of Katrina. How ironic that I finished it virtually on the eve of Hurricane Helene, which devastated the area I live in in Western North Carolina. Helene is now billed as the most powerful hurricane to hit the US since Katrina. Even as I type this, I can hear the whining of a chain saw eating through a downed tree. So the timing is, frankly, eerie.

But now I can identify a little with the wretchedness of the survivors of Katrina. At least our home was intact. But there is a certain strain to checking your dwindling supply of water and not knowing how you will be able to replenish it. It's mentally exhausting.

The irony is that just before Katrina struck, the mayor was congratulating himself on the largest percentage of evacuees before a hurricane ever. The evacuation was a success! Until it wasn't.

Just like Helene, Katrina packed a double-punch: the flooding that started shortly after the winds passed on. It wasn't really the storm surge or high winds that did down NOLA. It was all the water that needed to drain somewhere, and that somewhere was to the lowest point - New Orleans. Here, the French Broad River crested at its highest level in over a century. Here, Chimney Rock Village (just visited in July) was washed in to Lake Lure. It was the water that did the most damage.

Another similarity is the failure of FEMA to even show up. They say everyone needs to blame their failures in life on someone. So far for Helene, as for Katrina, it's FEMA. From the lack of federal interest to the lack of leadership and organization to the desperate attempts to keep others from helping, FEMA after Helene has been a virtual repeat of itself after Katrina. Last time, the blame game turned quickly political and reflected on George Bush. This time, one wonders upon whom it will fall.

And politics is clearly part of both situations. Governor Blanco of LA was a Democrat, and President Bush wasn't going to necessarily rush right out and help her, and let her take the credit. Same in WNC. Certainly, the county I'm in (Henderson) is dead red - no wonder President Biden has declared that he's sent all the help he can. But I think it's a fair question to ask what the federal government is doing when it promises millions in aid to foreign countries, when devastation is virtually on its doorstep. It's clear where Washington's priorities are. They will step over our dead bodies before they stoop to help.

Maybe it's easy for me to say this because I'm fully back on line - I don't want any more federal help because it always comes with strings attached. I believe we have the expertise to put ourselves back together. It will take longer, though, because the resources aren't always immediately available. So, really, what I would prefer is for Washington to leave us alone and let us keep our tax dollars and stop sending them overseas for their own benefit.

One shocking element about Katrina was how quickly the looting and raping began. Let's face it, the animal part of human nature is just below the surface. We went to Lowe's on Sunday, two days after Helene. They were only letting a few people in at a time, and there were multiple pallets of cinder blocks lined up in front of the store. I wonder if they were there to help in rebuilding - or to keep people from backing their pickup trucks through the front of the store.

So I enjoyed the book. It was a rare opportunity to compare/contrast my own experience. And it filled in some details for me about an event I was only vaguely aware of before the images of people on rooftops waving at helicopters hit the news.

Hurricane Katrina was an Atlantic hurricane that made it to Category 5 strength before making landfall in New Orleans. Other areas were damaged severely by this Hurricane, but this book has a specific focus on New Orleans. The strength of the storm did decrease in the hours before inundating New Orleans in many ways. The storm did plenty of damage from being a strong storm, but the flooding caused by the storm was the real killer. Levee walls and other flood protection systems failed. The city is below sea level to begin with, and water rushing in from the failed levees and then having no place to dissipate left the city in a state that would be the equivalent of sticking it in a bowl of water. Lack of preparation and warning were also factors in this catastrophe, and the response from the government was underwhelming, to put it nicely.

I have read several books and watched several things about Hurricane Katrina in the years since it happened. This happened my senior year of high school, which really dates me, but I remember it very clearly. We had a lot of students transfer in after the storm, because they had to leave Louisiana. I remember all of the images on the news, but hearing the personal stories is even more devastating that seeing everything on television. I thought this book did an amazing job relaying the personal experiences of human beings that lived through this event and suffered in the squalor afterwards. It is unreal to me that, even today in 2023, people are still not finished with cleanup from this particular storm or are still living in FEMA trailers. I just watched something about that not long before I started reading this book. The author did a lot of work to write this book, and the comprehensive nature of it is evident. I got this because I like disaster books, but it is a very valuable book about this event for the historical record.

While the book contains a vivid account of the Storm from many perspectives, it suffers from a few problems. 1) Based on the date, it was written very soon after the events and, as a result, has more than a few errors based on rumors. What's weird (maybe sloppy editing) is that the author will mention a rumor as if it was fact and then later in the book state that it was just a rumor. 2) While the author doesn't appear to be deliberately inaccurate, he's seems to have a pretty solid conservative bias. This book has the most pages devoted to looting of any of the accounts that I've read. Brinkley only rarely mentions people breaking into stores to obtain food and water and goes on endlessly about vandalism and theft of expensive items. While he doesn't give the national Republican administration a free pass, you feel that he's (as much as possible) pro-Republican and anti-Democrat. At one point he specifically refers to Gov. Blanco's complaint that too many LA national guard members were away in Iraq during the Storm as "a specious, liberal, Democratic argument." Regardless of the validity of her statement (not much), the adjectives he lards it with give you an idea where he's coming from. Barely three stars.

I picked this book out of the many accounts of Katrina because it appeared to be the most comprehensive and widely-read - and at over 600 pages, comprehensive it certainly was. Still, reading this 2006 book in 2022, when the Katrina response has for many years now been almost universally acknowledged as the epitomic result of systemic, institutionalized racism, was disheartening at many points. I also wasn’t crazy about the chronological way the history of the storm and its aftermath was written. It felt like the author was trying to fit literally every single story he’d ever recorded into one book, which sometimes resulted in very strange jumps from one moment to the next; still, as chaotic and unwieldy as the story of Katrina is, I must admit I don’t have any suggestions for how it should have otherwise been organized. Overall, I’m glad I read this book. I was 17 when Katrina hit, busy applying to colleges and in so many co-curriculars that it was exceedingly rare for me to be home from school in time for the nightly news, so I had only the broadest understanding of what happened during the week’s worth of time this book covers. For the factual timeline and anecdotal accounts of survivors, this book was great. I learned a lot.

Solid overview of what happened during Katrina beyond the obvious. This filled in a number of gaps in knowledge I had from the storm and especially the response. Damning but fair and honest. Mostly tragic.

This is a massive book but very interesting. I lived in Houston at the time of the storm and there were lots of things I remember and lots I did not. Lots of disfunction at all levels of government and with the people of New Orleans themselves. Bad situation with lots of blame to spread.

I feel like I knew a lot of this but it still hit me what a horror Hurrican Katrina was in every way especially in the crisis response mismanagement. Definitely shines a spotlight on institutionalized discrimination.

“The country could always bounce back from a natural disaster, and the hurricane was a natural disaster. But the great deluge was a disaster the country brought upon itself.”

get him (George Bush) !! get him !! go Douglas Brinkley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pretty good but way more about New Orleans than Mississippi. The author totally did not like Mayor Ray Nagin.

Outstanding book about hurricane Katrina and its devastating aftermath. It was unbelievable to me the looting and disgusting behavior that people exhibited afterwards.