Douglas Brinkley The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi 5 CDs (abridged)

Reader: Kyf Brewer

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrinadestroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yetthose wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless tripletragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast from Louisiana toMississippi to Alabama.

First was the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall inthe United States -- 150 mile per hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces. Second, the storm-surge flooding,which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest refugee crisis sincethe Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, and whole towns insoutheastern Louisiana ceased to exist. And third, the human tragedy ofgovernment mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself.

In The Great Deluge, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley, a NewOrleans resident and professor of history at Tulane University, rips the storyof Katrina apart and relates what the category 3 hurricane was like from everypoint of view, while recognizing the true heroes.

Throughout the book, Brinkley lets the Katrina survivors tell their ownstories, masterfully allowing them to record the nightmare that was Katrina.The Great Deluge investigates the failure of government at each level andbreaks important new stories. Packed with interviews and original research, ittraces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed theKatrina disaster to turn the Gulf Coast into a scene from a war movie or athird-world documentary.

Free UK delivery