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Title: Katrina puts author in the spotlight [1927 flood]
Source:
Boston Globe
URL Source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/li ... uthor_in_the_spotlight?mode=PF
Published: Sep 10, 2005
Author: David Mehegan
Post Date: 2005-09-10 19:49:04 by MUDDOG
Keywords: spotlight, Katrina, author
Views: 53
Comments: 3
Every good book has its time, but that time doesn't always come right away. That's certainly true for New Orleans writer John M. Barry and his 1997 book, ''Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America." Since Hurricane Katrina hit, the eight-year-old book has been as high as No. 10 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Pursued hotly by national media, Barry has been interviewed on C-SPAN and NPR's ''Morning Edition" (scheduled to air Monday), and tomorrow he'll appear with Tim Russert on NBC's ''Meet the Press." Meanwhile, publisher Simon & Schuster has returned to press for 17,500 more copies, as warehouse supplies dwindle. A Providence native and former football coach, Barry, who was in Washington when the hurricane struck, is a distinguished visiting scholar at Tulane University. He has published three other books, including last year's ''The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History." In the 1990s, he turned to an almost-forgotten episode in American history. In 1927, the rising Mississippi River threatened to flood New Orleans. Local officials ordered the levees upstream of the city breached to divert the water. But as a result, vast rural areas were flooded, hundreds were killed, thousands of poor black residents became homeless, and damage ran (in today's dollars) in the billions. The flood's political and social impact was as great as the natural. Rage at how the poor, especially African-Americans, were sacrificed to protect the affluent boosted the careers of Louisiana politico Huey Long and future president Herbert Hoover. The disaster unleashed the epic migration of black Americans out of the South and into northern cities. It also led to a new idea in America -- that the federal government, not state or local government, must take responsibility for regional flood-control systems and disaster relief. That new idea, Barry wrote, paved the way for the Tennessee Valley Authority and other massive federal projects of the Great Depression. Barry's book was never a bestseller, but it sold consistently over time, especially in paperback. Now, its chronicle of a natural disaster caused, or made worse, by human folly and complacency, has drawn renewed attention. Q. What drew you to the great flood as a book subject? I had always wanted to write about the Mississippi River. This mythic force, which seems so central to America, had always fascinated me. Growing up in Rhode Island, I had never heard of the flood. At the time of the 50th anniversary, I was writing a sports column for the Vieux Carre Courier [a New Orleans alternative weekly]. The local newspaper ignored the anniversary, but there was a special issue of the Courier, and I was astounded by the photos. Q. Did knowing the 1927 history give you a sense of foreboding that something like it would happen again? Everybody who knows anything knew that the levee system was underfunded, and that if we had another 1927 flood there would be a comparable disaster. The 1927 flood was enormously greater, but a hurricane of Katrina's strength was predictable and expected. Q. When you wrote the book, did you encounter an attitude that this event was long ago, far away, and could never happen again? People in New Orleans have been well aware of the risk of this disaster happening. The Army Corps of Engineers loved the book. People never expect these things to happen to them, today. It will always happen to someone else, tomorrow. One of the definitions of leadership is to anticipate such dangers and prepare for them, despite a lethargic public. Q. No one knows what the long-term repercussions of this disaster will be, but do you have any hunches? In engineering terms, this will confirm that you need to incorporate into your planning the environmental implications, broadly defined. You have to look for unintended consequences. The construction of the levee system after the 1927 flood has contributed to the sinking of the land, for example. That was not considered at all. You have to look broadly at what you're doing. In social policy, the political implications of the disastrous ''disaster relief" in the 1927 flood changed the way that people viewed their government. This time, we've seen the exposure of people who were left behind in every way. How politics will address that remains to be seen. Q. What do you see ahead for New Orleans? I think it will be rebuilt. The coastal erosion problem will be addressed. A lot of those houses are going to have to be bulldozed. But New Orleans is a unique city, architecturally. I think it would be a serious mistake to take away what makes New Orleans unique by putting up prefabricated housing. Q. What's next for you? I've been working on a book about the separation of church and state in the 17th century. I've told people that I'm never doing another disaster book.
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#1. To: MUDDOG (#0)
Good catch - thanks.
Hurricane Katrina and Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927
I saw him on C-Span. He said the flood didn't elect Huey governor. Huey would've been elected anyway. But where the flood really helped Huey, was in the impeachment where the flooded parishes rallied around and saved him, in their hatred for the upper classes who had flooded them to save themselves and were now after Huey.
#2. To: lodwick (#1)
“kol Yisrael areivim zeh b’zeh"
#3. To: lodwick (#1)
Barry has been interviewed on C-SPAN
I've already said too much.
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