Katrina

June 15, 2015
A decade after Hurricane Katrina wreaked unprecedented destruction upon New Orleans, journalist Rivlin (Broke, USA) looks back at the fall and rebuilding of the Big Easy. It’s a sprawling, epic tale, filled with cold numbers and heartbreaking scenes of loss and devastation. It’s also an insightful, accessible saga that follows a wide cast of participants—including politicians, businessmen, and everyday residents—over the course of many years. Rivlin addresses the city’s history leading up to Katrina’s landfall, examines how the hurricane transformed the region, and then settles in for the long, arduous rebuilding process. He doesn’t pull punches as he looks at the political, economic, and social aspects of New Orleans’s struggle to recover, nor does he shy away from the complicated racial themes that have always been a part of the city’s history. Rivlin writes from firsthand experience as a journalist first sent to report on the storm’s immediate aftermath, and he skillfully balances out the human elements with concrete details of the devastation and the reconstruction that has followed. For those interested in how New Orleans came to the brink of destruction and slowly fought its way back to become a thriving, even improved, metropolis, this is certainly a work worth checking out. Agent: Elizabeth Kaplan, Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency.

July 1, 2015

In his latest work, Rivlin (Broke, USA) details the immediate aftermath of the storm and the scramble to save New Orleans. The author, who covered Katrina for the New York Times, follows the politicians, planners, and business leaders who were charged with rebuilding the city, including Ray Nagin, the once-heralded mayor who was later convicted of corruption. Unlike Roberta Gratz's We're Still Here Ya Bastards, which celebrates New Orleanians who fought to save their neighborhoods, this work documents the failure of the federal government and private sector to address the desperate needs of many of the city's residents. While generally free of analysis, the narrative is quick to highlight that it was the large African American community in New Orleans that bore the worst of both the storm and the recovery. VERDICT This blow-by-blow account of the months and years after Katrina brings back the frustration felt by so many who watched the devastation unfold and raises important questions about the role of race in the response to natural disasters. Recommended for readers interested in New Orleans history and culture. [See Prepub Alert, 2/23/15.]--Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015
Hurricane Katrina is nearing its 10-year-anniversary, but as Rivlin makes clear, it's a tale that needs to be understood and never forgotten. His approach, filled with personal stories and starting at the very beginning, when evacuations were still possible, brings to awful, almost unbelievable life the multiple tragedies that Katrina comprised, not the least of which was the government's unconscionable lack of response and neighboring citizens' racial enmities. But the book's main focus is on the groupsand there were many, local and nationaltrying to decide how to rebuild a city parts of which, primarily those where low-income, mainly black citizens lived, were at least two feet below sea level. Should those be deemed parklands, and, if so, how to compensate their former residents, many of whom didn't plan (or couldn't afford) to return? Rivlin captures the snark, the bellyaching, and the outright denial of those in chargeand many aimed to be in charge (while many dodged responsibility as well). A fascinating lesson in urban planning in the face of calamity and financial shenanigans about what has been deemed the most expensive disaster in history. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 1, 2015
Former New York Times reporter Rivlin (Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.-How the Working Poor Became Big Business, 2010, etc.) delivers a magnificently reported account of life in a broken, waterlogged city. During Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, the levees of New Orleans broke, causing $135 billion in damages, killing over 1,800 people, and leaving 80 percent of the city flooded. Most devastated were the lowest-lying (poor, black) neighborhoods. News coverage and a plethora of books have burnished the images of those days in the American psyche-the rubble and wrecked cars, the FEMA trailers, the 25,000 people stranded in the fetid Superdome, and the seeming inability of officials to act decisively to rescue black residents who could not afford to flee. Rivlin arrived early on to cover the tragedy and stayed with the story for 10 years, conducting hundreds of interviews, exploring every imaginable aspect of the "botched rescue" and recovery, and delving sympathetically into the lives of countless people, black and white, who stayed, left, or returned. Throughout the book, the author provides intimate portraits-e.g., black banker Alden McDonald, who worked tirelessly on behalf of black residents; white suburbanite Joe Canizaro, head of the official recovery commission; former Black Panther Malik Rahim, who led rebuilding efforts in the 9th Ward. This is a nightmarish story of variously powerless, incompetent, and politicking figures, from the George Bush administration, hampered by "incompetence" and "ideology," to the "ineffectual" Mayor Ray Nagin, now imprisoned for public corruption, and, most disturbing, white blue bloods who looked forward to a city without blacks. Rivlin's exquisitely detailed narrative captures the anger, fatigue, and ambiguity of life during the recovery, the centrality of race at every step along the way, and the generosity of many from elsewhere in the country. Although federal monies eventually helped give the city a "massive makeover," widespread poverty remains, with only a third of houses now occupied in the lower 9th. Deeply engrossing, well-written, and packed with revealing stories.

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