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daisy32's review
3.0
Let's just say it took me quite a long while to finish this book, and I'm a fast reader. It just didn't engage me. Such an important topic, and the book started off well, but went on to focus primarily of the politics of New Orleans during and after Katrina and little else. I felt like I was missing any real experiences of the Lower 9th, and wanted to know more about the rebuilding effort. It's obviously well-researched and informative on what it does address, but wasn't the book I was looking for.
njmatt04's review
4.0
A good read to help better understand New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. The racial and socioeconomic tension, the personalities, the fall of Ray Nagin, the extreme differences in how some neighborhoods moved on and others did not and how the government and city elites willed it along or fought it. Probably a required reading to understand post-Katrina New Orleans.
abookishtype's review
3.0
Reading Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial last month has given me a strange fascination for Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. When I saw Gary Rivlin’s Katrina: After the Flood listed on NetGalley for review, I leapt at the chance to read it. The book chronicles the nearly ten years that have passed since Katrina destroyed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I read it because I wanted to know what’s happened to the city since it’s faded from the national conscience. Katrina: After the Flood is written in roughly chronological order, detailing 2005 through about 2007 before leapfrogging up to the present. Rivlin, a journalist who has written for The New York Times and WIRED, among other national publications, follows dozens of New Orleanians from the mayor’s intimates to activists to bank CEOs to ordinary homeowners to show a full picture of the devastation of the city and its long, unfinished journey to recovery...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.
gglazer's review
4.0
This is a really powerful, detailed book about Katrina. Also depressing as hell.
ellemille's review
4.0
I have been reading everything about Hurricane Katrina that I can get my hands on. This is a great companion piece to Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial. Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in New Orleans is a good case study on the insidiousness of systemic racism in every aspect of American life. Rivlin studies everything from Gretna, to the takeover of the city's public schools, and how the Road Home initiative short changed working class home owners and ignored renters.
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