A review by k80uva
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley

3.0

Gruesome and compelling, but it really needed some editing--it's long and circular. There's also a pervasive, distracting issue with the author editorializing. Hurricane Katrina was a deeply fraught, chaotic, tragic situation and it naturally lends itself to polemics. I don't even fault Brinkley for that. It's more that he seems really inconsistent in his accusations--he has a major focus on rape and looting and "thugs," though in the end he also seems to have some data that undercuts how widespread that was. He's enormously accusatory toward Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin, but considerably less so about the federal government. He's very romantic about vigilantism and "can do spirit" that arose in the absence of organized aid. It's a lot of trees and not enough forest, and it makes the book seem rambling and not entirely reliable. So while it was an engaging read, I feel like I need to read another book to disambiguate the information in this one.