Bibliography > Featured > Hurricane Katrina

In August 2005, thousands of New Orleans residents-overwhelmingly poor, largely people of color, the majority black-were left to face one of the worst "natural" disasters in US history on their own. They were left to die in prisons, in nursing homes, and on the street. Survivors were criminalized as "looters" for struggling to obtain food, water, diapers, medicine, and other essentials of life that no one else could or would provide. As Katrina's waters receded and the body count soared, an ugly truth (re)surfaced: The lives of those who are poor, who are vulnerable, and who are not white are not valued by the US government.

While commentators across the political spectrum, celebrities, and other observers expressed outrage that the US government would let this happen to Americans-even "those Americans"-millions outside of New Orleans live without adequate health insurance; clean air and water; decent education, housing, nutrition, health care, and work; and freedom from police brutality and state repression. And thousands are deported, displaced, and dying in prisons and illegal wars from coast to coast, gulf to gulf.

Short and accessible, this anthology, featuring such voices as Vandana Shiva, Glen Ford, Jordan Flaherty, and Robert Bullard, takes readers beyond the Superdome. It explores the complexity of this turning point in US history as representative of the nation's direction and priorities.

 Other Editors: Joshua Bowen, Brandon Cooper, Lesley Cort, Michael Duncan, Steven Rydarowski, Melanie Sweeney, Paul Ruffin 

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina--the costliest hurricane ever to hit the United States--monopolized headlines, thoughts, and hearts across the country as lives were forever changed, some erased. This book not only chronicles the devastation of that storm but also immortalizes through words and photographs some of the tales of personal tragedy associated with it, while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit, as communities come together and begin to rebuild.

In this astonishing collection of personal narratives, readers come face-to-face with the stark reality wrought by Hurricane Katina and the failure of the federal levees. Many books have been written about the tragedy, but the work done by University of New Orleans students to collect these survivors' narratives in 2005 is groundbreaking. Every aspect of the post-Katrina New Orleans experience is present here, from areas as divergent as the I-10 overpass, the French Quarter, and shelters across the South. The rescuers and rescued have equal voices and share memories poignant and startling. Perhaps most revealing is the way evacuees were greeted elsewhere. From the Jefferson Parish deputies who were "very sinister" to people at the Oklahoma border who held signs of welcome, the reaction of various communities to the national nightmare is a snapshot of the country's best and worst. Cutting, caustic, and riveting from start to finish, this collection does not shy away from presenting the agonies that often go unrecorded in the aftermath of a sudden disaster. Miles away from academic analysis, this is American social history from the ground up and staggering in its significance. --Colleen Mondor (Booklist)

Grade 3-8-A compilation of stories and artwork by 91 children in grades K-12. Their submissions range from single-sentence descriptions, short paragraphs, and poems to black-and-white pencil sketches and paintings/drawings in other media. (Teachers and administrators also offer brief reflections.) The book is divided into four sections that parallel the disaster's time line and effects-Evacuation, Storm, Aftermath, and Hope. Stark white pages serve as a crisp backdrop for the text and the variously sized art, which attracts the eye. Readers will be moved by images and descriptions that students share: My house drowned; Shingles were falling like pancakes; Everything in life is a privilege, not a right....I never believed that until I lost it all. The impact of the storm on the families of Biloxi and their struggles to rebuild their lives are vividly portrayed. Ultimately, the book emphasizes the resilience of children and the healing powers of art. It is also a practical means to helping the recovery efforts since a portion of the proceeds from the sales are being donated to Biloxi Public Schools.-Maura Bresnahan, High Plain Elementary School, Andover, MA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This no holds documentary chronicles the days before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Told from the viewpoint of several families stuck in New Orleans, this moving and unflinching story says so much by saying so little. Most of this footage has never been seen by the public, and there is absolutely no stock footage used in this film.

Before (During) After is a visual and literary narrative of how Hurricane Katrina has transformed the work of twelve photographers from Southeast Louisiana: Jennifer Shaw, Frank Relle, Lori Waselchuk, Rowan Metzner, Samuel Portera, David Rae Morris, Jonathan Traviesa, Eric Julien, Zack Smith, Elizabeth Kleinveld, Mark J. Sindler and Thomas Neff. The book emphasizes not only the effect of Hurricane Katrina, but also the way individuals are influenced by their environments, particularly in times of upheaval.

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.

First was the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States--150 mile per hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces.

Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest refugee crisis since the Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, as debris and sewage coursed through the streets, and whole towns in southeastern Louisiana ceased to exist.

And third, the human tragedy of government mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself. Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, implemented an evacuation plan that favored the rich and healthy. Kathleen Blanco, governor of Louisiana, tended to details but dithered in the most important aspect of her job: providing leadership in a time of fear and confusion. Michael C. Brown, the FEMA director, seemed more concerned with his sartorial splendor than the specter of death and horror that was taking New Orleans into its grip.

In The Great Deluge, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley, a New Orleans resident and professor of history at Tulane University, rips the story of Katrina apart and relates what the category 3 hurricane was like from every point of view. The book finds the true heroes--such as Coast Guard officer Jimmy Duckworth, who oversaw the quick-thinking, lifesaving rescue efforts during the crucial first days of the crisis. And Tony Zumbado, the hurricane jock, who, in his role as an NBC videographer, first broke the stories of the anarchy at the convention center and the deaths at Memorial Hospital.

Throughout the book, Brinkley lets the Katrina survivors tell their own stories, masterfully allowing them to record the nightmare that was Katrina. The Great Deluge investigates the failure of government at each level and breaks important new stories. Packed with interviews and original research, it traces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed the Katrina disaster to devestate the Gulf Coast.

This book brings together the nation's top sociological researchers in an effort to catalogue the modern catastrophe that is Hurricane Katrina. The chapters in this volume discuss sociological perspectives of disaster literature, provide alternative views and analyses of early post-storm data collection efforts, and examine emerging social questions that have surfaced in the aftermath of Katrina.

This heavily researched and annotated collection of essays on the "geography of vulnerability" as found in the aftermath of Katrina is an overwhelming analysis of a microcosm of American society. Written by experts in environmental justice, land-use policy, and political science, it addresses everything from transportation infrastructure to social inequality and urban development. Although academic in style, it carries emotional weight. The numbers alone are powerful, as the years of societal neglect for lower-income residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are laid bare. From quoting a misguided congressman who believes that all living in rural areas are farmers to the pathetically inadequate evacuation plan for one of the largest and most vulnerable cities in the country, the authors each have a distinct focus which together provide a cohesive look at how so many things went wrong after the catastrophe and how those errors were years in the making. With solid, fact-based conclusions, responsible recommendations, and chapters on rebuilding efforts, this title should serve as a textbook for today's urban planners. - Booklist

Meet the heroes of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

"An in-depth, first-hand, on-the-scene account of the valiant efforts of the men and women of America's Coast Guard during one of the nation's worst natural disasters, and the resolve, grit, and determination which led to the saving of tens of thousands of lives."--Clayton Evans, author of Rescue at Sea

"Tremendous. Canney describes how a service smaller than the New York City police department was able to rise to the occasion with near perfect execution of its missions."--Vincent W. Patton III, Master Chief Petty Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard (retired)

Of all the Homeland Security agencies operating in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina's landfall, no agency performed its duties with the same level of diligence and heroism as did the U.S. Coast Guard. Tirelessly, Coasties in helicopters and small boats pulled survivors from rooftops, floating debris, and high ground and ferried them to safety as the rest of us watched live on CNN.

Only a few days later, disaster struck again in the form of Hurricane Rita, which left even more people in desperate need of rescue and assistance. In the aftermath of the storms, some 5,000 Coast Guard personnel rescued 33,735 individuals--six times more than the annual average number rescued by the service nationwide. Then, unobserved by the media, the Coast Guard successfully restored the vital navigation aids in the region, preventing further death and destruction.

In Katrina's Wakepresents a riveting account of the astounding operations undertaken by the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike America. While other government agencies struggled to mobilize and failed to provide real solutions, one small, decentralized agency stepped forward and performed above and beyond the call of duty.

The fatal inundation of New Orleans was no natural disaster, argues this hard-hitting investigative report. Wall Street Journal reporters Cooper and Block finger two very man-made causes of the tragedy. The first was the decades-long failure of local officials and the Army Corps of Engineers to fix New Orleans' poorly designed and constructed levees and floodwalls, which collapsed under moderate hurricane conditions. The second and more spectacular was the breakdown of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after its incorporation into the Department of Homeland Security, which cut FEMA's funding and authority and reoriented it toward the national obsession with terrorism. The result, when the flood came, was a bumbling federal response hobbled by complacent planning, miscommunication, red tape (even recovery of the dead was delayed by paperwork) and an inability to deliver promised supplies and transportation. The authors' exhaustively researched account slogs through the intricacies of this bureaucratic nightmare and goes beyond the usual pillorying of FEMA head Michael Brown to criticize higher officials in the White House and, especially, DHS. Cooper and Block manage to thread a readable, coherent story through the morass of detail and acronyms, with disquieting implications about the government's ability to cope with catastrophe. Photos. (Aug. 8)Note: Publication of Hamid Karzai's Letter from Kabul (Reviews, July 10) has been postponed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Hurricane Katrina not only devastated a large area of the nation's Gulf coast, it also raised fundamental questions about ways the nation can, and should, deal with the inevitable problems of economic risk and social responsibility. This volume gathers leading experts to examine lessons that Hurricane Katrina teaches us about better assessing, perceiving, and managing risks from future disasters.

In the years ahead we will inevitably face more problems like those caused by Katrina, from fire, earthquake, or even a flu pandemic. America remains in the cross hairs of terrorists, while policy makers continue to grapple with important environmental and health risks. Each of these scenarios might, in itself, be relatively unlikely to occur. But it is statistically certain that we will confront such catastrophes, or perhaps one we have never imagined, and the nation and its citizenry must be prepared to act. That is the fundamental lesson of Katrina.

The 20 contributors to this volume address questions of public and private roles in assessing, managing, and dealing with risk in American society and suggest strategies for moving ahead in rebuilding the Gulf coast.

In late August 2005, the levees of New Orleans failed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The entire nation was riveted by the media coverage of the disaster, but black and white Americans drew very different lessons from the experience. This study uses both national survey data and interviews with returned New Orleans residents in November 2005 to understand the intersection of race and perception in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  Following the disaster, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago supported a national survey more than 1200 Americans to gauge political and racial attitudes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Principal investigators are Michael Dawson, Cathy Cohen, and Melissa Harriss-Lacewell.

On behalf of the university of Chicago, Knowledge Networks conducted a study on issues of race in America in the context of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Specifically, the study replicated previous studies on racial attitudes and employed experimental questions specific to racial elements of the Katrina disaster.

The main survey was fielded between October 28 and November 17, 2005. During that time frame, Knowledge Networks administered the main survey to Knowledge Networks panelists who completed an October 2004 survey called Race and Civil Society, which was also conducted for Professor Dawson. The sample included two other groups, a new general population sub-sample and an over-sample of young African-Americans.

2008 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature, this astonishingly powerful film is at once horrifying and exhilarating. Directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (producers, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine), Trouble the Water takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall--just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. "It's going to be a day to remember," Kim declares. As the hurricane begins to rage and the floodwaters fill their world and the screen, Kim and her husband Scott continue to film their harrowing retreat to higher ground and the dramatic rescues of friends and neighbors. The filmmakers document the couple's return to New Orleans, the devastation of their neighborhood and the appalling repeated failures of government. Weaving an insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verite and in-your-face filmmaking, Trouble the Water is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes--two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.

National Geographic brings back the critically-acclaimed Inside Hurricane Katrina in a commemorative edition that includes an additional never-released bonus program.

Its path and power were known. Its imminent arrival was certain. Yet somehow, when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast with Category 4 winds and a storm surge that would drown most of New Orleans, no one was prepared for the chaos it unleashed. Now relive the onslaught of the monster storm that blind-sided America, caught officials off guard, and doomed thousands of victims in one of the most devastating natural disasters of modern times.

National Geographic takes you Inside Hurricane Katrina to shed new light on the fateful decisions of those in charge and the desperate struggles of those fighting to survive the awesome impact of one of nature's ultimate weapons of mass destruction.

There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster is the first critical scholarly book on the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The disaster will go down in record as one of the worst in American history, not least because of the government's generally inept and cavalier response. But it's also a huge story for other obvious reasons. Firstly, the impact of the hurricane was uneven, and race and class (and tied to this, poverty) were deeply implicated in the unevenness. It was not by accident that the poorest and blackest neighborhoods were the ones that were buried under water. Secondly, the response underscored the impoverishment of social policy (or what passes for it) in both George W. Bush's America and more specifically the Republican-dominated South. Thirdly, New Orleans is not just any place - it's a great American city with a rich and unique history. People care about the place and what happens there. Fourthly, what happened and what will happen there can tell us a greatdeal about the state of urban and regional planning in contemporary America.
The book, edited by two eminent scholars/authors, gathers together ten excellent scholars to put forth a multifaceted portrait of the social implications of the disaster. And the disaster was primarily social in nature, as the title reminds us. The book covers the response to the disaster and the roles that race and class played, its impact on housing, the historical context of urban disasters in America, the nature of contemporary metropolitan planning, what the hurricane has taught us about planning, the role of the vast prison system in all of this, the future of economic development, the roles of business and the media, and how the hurricane disproportionately impacted female headed households. In total, it offers a critical and comprehensive social portrait of the disaster's catastrophic effects on New Orleans.

Horne, metro editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, writes with the clipped, raw urgency of a thriller writer in this humanist account of what happened after the levees broke. As already widely reported, residents who ignored the mandatory evacuation order (thinking "Katrina... had all the makings of a flop") quickly found themselves surrounded by bloated corpses floating in toxic floodwaters and without a consolidated rescue effort. Horne quickly moves past the melodrama of a striking disaster to recount the stories of individuals caught in the storm's hellish aftermath or mired in the government's hamstrung response: a Louisiana State University climatologist goes head-to-head with the Army Corps of Engineers over inadequate flood protection and faulty levees; a former Black Panther provides emergency health care at a local mosque. Horne saves his sharpest barbs for President Bush and the Department of Homeland Security ("if Homeland Security... was what stood between America and the next 9/11, then... America was in deep trouble") for failing to muster an appropriate response. Big disasters spawn big books, and though Horne's isn't the definitive account, it's an honest, angry and wrenching response to a massively bungled catastrophe.

Director Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke is the definitive document of the unmitigated disaster that was, and is, Hurricane Katrina. It's also a contemporary manifestation of an ancient tradition: an oral history, told by the people who lived it, with no narration and only the occasional use of archival cable and broadcast news footage in addition to Lee's own film. And a grim tale it is, an "American tragedy" subtitled "a Requiem in Four Acts," each of them about an hour long ("Act V," appearing on the third of the set's three discs, is a lengthy epilogue with new material not included in the original HBO broadcast) and focusing almost exclusively on New Orleans, as opposed to the Gulf Coast region in general.
Act I sets the scene; as the hurricane nears the Crescent City, some residents leave town, while others stay behind, figuring they'll just ride the storm out (Mayor Ray Nagin's "mandatory evacuation" order rings fairly hollow, as there's no public transportation provided for the many who don't own vehicles and thus couldn't get out even if they wanted to). The real problems begin after Katrina makes landfall on August 29, 2005. Displaced New Orleaneans crowd into the Superdome, soon to become a living hell for those stuck there; the incredibly poorly engineered levees break, flooding some 80 percent of the city; and people start dying by the hundreds, victims of drowning, lack of food, water, and medicine, and other causes. And so it goes. Act II finds the survivors struggling to keep it together while the federal, state, and local assistance they've been promised fails to show up; Act III traces the dispersal of these so-called "refugees" (as one man puts it, "Refugees? You mean they took away our citizenship, too?") all over the country, not knowing where their families, friends, and neighbors are, or even if they're still alive; and Act IV deals with the slow rebuilding of the city while insurance companies refuse to pay claims and money keeps going toward the Iraq war effort instead.

Several themes predominate here. One, of course, is the appalling performance of authorities on nearly every level, who ignored specific warnings about the levees and then professed ignorance after the fact; Lee doesn't have to go out of his way to make George W. Bush, FEMA chief Michael Brown, and other members of the Bush administration (not to mention his own mother) look bad, as they do an excellent job of that themselves. Another is the shameful ineptitude of the response; it's hard not to be disgusted when it's pointed out more than once that while we were able to provide supplies and assistance to Indonesians within two days of the 2004 tsunami, American citizens were virtually ignored for five days or more. Most of all, When the Levees Broke (which includes optional commentary by Lee for all four acts) leaves us feeling the sheer rage of the poor and dispossessed of New Orleans, where the population is 70 percent African-American. Confronted with the ignorance, arrogance, and callousness of the people whose job it was to protect them, they can point to just one cause: racism. --Sam Graham

In the wake of the worst natural and humanitarian disasters ever to visit American shores nearly 600 African-Americans were airlifted to the almost entirely white state of Utah...without their knowledge.DESERT BAYOU seeks to examine whether two cultures can come together in a time of utter chaos or whether their differences prove too great a challenge to overcome. In their own words evacuees of Hurricane Katrina tell how they survived the storm of the century and out of the rubble ended up at a military installation in the Utah deserts. With interviews from recording artist Master P celebrity Rabbi Shmuley Boteach evacuees political and military leaders and community and social figures the questions of race politics and religion hurdle towards each other in this truly American story: a story of loss and reunion of sorrow and rebirth of anger and rejoicing but most of all...a story of hope.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi. The storm devastated the region and its citizens. But its devastation did not reach across racial and class lines equally. In an original combination of research and advocacy, Hurricane Katrina: America's Unnatural Disaster questions the efficacy of the national and global responses to Katrina's central victims, African Americans.

This collection of polemical essays explores the extent to which African Americans and others were, and are, disproportionately affected by the natural and manmade forces that caused Hurricane Katrina. Such an engaged study of this tragic event forces us to acknowledge that the ways in which we view our history and life have serious ramifications on modern human relations, public policy, and quality of life.

In the 1964 "Freedom Summer" campaign led by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), more than 1000 volunteersmostly white, privileged, Northern college studentswent to Mississippi to launch voter-registration drives, impromptu schools and community outreach. Within 10 days, three participants had been murdered by local segregationists; dozens more would endure beatings and arrests. Drawing on questionnaires and interviews with hundreds of the volunteers, McAdam, associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, dispels numerous myths surrounding Freedom Summer and the '60s in general. He shows, for example, that most of the participants were liberal reformers (not radicals) who, far from rebelling against their parents, acted upon idealistic values learned at home. Furthermore, many volunteers have since built their lives upon a progressive political base, joining the women's, antinuclear, environmental and other movements. McAdam weaves first-person testimony, sociological analysis and history into a moving, important probe.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Leblanc, one of the Hurricane Katrina survivors featured in Spike Lee's HBO documentary When the Levees Broke, offers her own extended recollection of the destruction of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Leblanc details the decision her family made to stay in their apartment and ride out the storm and the preparations they made for what they thought would be just another hurricane. Leblanc, her husband, Ron, her mother, and a young nephew with autism were among the Ninth Ward residents mired in filthy water and inhuman conditions following the storm. Leblanc recalls, in very human flashes of selfishness, not wanting her more altruistic husband to risk his life helping others. She, a more reluctant hero, plotted to punish political figures she held responsible, as she struggled along atop the levee, overcoming her own fears to help strangers and try not to judge those who took advantage. All the while, Leblanc wondered about the politics of the city and the nation that would allow such a tragedy. A very plainspoken and personal look at a tragedy with national consequences.

Words cannot adequately convey the human dimension of the devastation wreaked on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Thomas Neff s photographs can. A volunteer in the city in the early days after the flood, this Baton Rouge photographer witnessed firsthand the confusion and suffering, as well as the persistence and strength, of those who stuck it out. The friendship he extended residents enabled him to approach his subjects from a uniquely personal perspective. Readers will meet people from all walks of life who are exhausted by grief and shock but who are determined to hold on to their culture and their city. Neff s gripping black-and-white images and poignant narratives show individuals reorganizing their lives, trying to maintain their individuality, and even enriching their souls as they help one another. These are the stories that New Orleans citizens told each other and photographs that show the city as it knows itself.

On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, killing at least 1,300, destroying over 600,000 houses, and turning downtown New Orleans into an uninhabitable swamp.
In a compelling hour-by-hour reconstruction of the ferocious storm, NOVA exposes crucial failures in preparation and engineering that led to the worst disaster in U.S. history. The film probes the titanic forces behind hurricanes and the latest technology for tracking and predicting them, showing how scientists precisely foresaw the impact of a strong hurricane on New Orleans a year before Katrina struck. NOVA investigates the fatal flaws in New Orleans' levees and the huge challenge posed by protecting and rebuilding the city. As global temperatures rise, are killer storms like Katrina a growing threat?

Hurricane Katrina: The Storm that Drowned a City presents astonishing storm footage, suspenseful eyewitness testimony, and a penetrating analysis of what went wrong. Viewers relive the storm through the eyes of survivors and the stories of top engineers, hurricane experts, and emergency officials as they grappled with the arrival of the storm and its traumatic aftermath.

An article that combines the author's two loves: rap music by way of Lil' Wayne, and combating social injustice by way of teaching.

"On New Orleans radio, it seems like nearly every song features Lil Wayne. My kids sang his songs in class, in the hallways, before school, after school. I had a student who would rap a Lil Wayne line if he didn't know the answer to a question.

An eighth grader wrote his Persuasive Essay on the topic "Lil Wayne is the best rapper alive." Main ideas for three body paragraphs: Wayne has the most tracks and most hits, best metaphors and similes, competition is fake."

Even before the 2005 Disaster in the Delta as the devastation and loss wrought by the category-three hurricane known as Katrina came to be known statistics emerged about the aggressive educational neglect of Louisiana s African American schoolchildren. The harrowing data about the inadequacies being as racialized as the distribution of aid in the storm s aftermath are chilling indeed. Yet, they have not dissuaded the more than thirty contributors to this volume from viewing Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity and a challenge to transform schools and society for the good of the entire United States. Divided into three sections ( Education and School Contexts, Preparing Professionals for the Possible, and The Social Dynamics of Education Reform ), the seventeen chapters of The Children Hurricane Katrina Left Behind discuss what is essential for rebuilding urban schools in New Orleans as well as the nation, engaging the nuanced nexus of social events and educational policy (e.g., No Child Left Behind) as it relates to the preparation of professional educators and the future of America s schools.

1 Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national praise, Rose provides a rollercoaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor- in a way that only he could find in a devastated wasteland.

They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of the dead and the living, storiesof survivors and believers, stories of hop and despair. And stories about refrigerators.

1 Dead in Attic freeze- frames New Orleans, caught between an old era and a new, during its most desperate time, as it struggles out of the floodwaters and wills itself back to life.

Chris Rose is a columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, and essayist for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and a frequent commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. In 2006, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prise for Distinguished Commentary in recgnition of his Katrina columns and was awarded a share in the Time-Picayune staff's Pulitzer for Public Service. Rose lives in New Orleans with his three children.

Investigates the political storm surrounding the devastation of America's Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina. Veteran FRONTLINE producer/reporter Martin Smith will lead a team to ask hard questions about the decisions leading up to the disaster.

As deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, Ivor van Heerden had for years been warning state and local officials about New Orleans’s vulnerability to flooding. But like Cassandra’s, his predictions were ignored - until Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. Suddenly, van Heerden found himself at the center of a media maelstrom. Stepping forward to challenge the official version of events, he revealed the truth about the city’s shoddy levee construction.

Now, in The Storm, van Heerden shares up-to-the-minute reporting from his investigations and connects the dots among the Army Corps of Engineers, the bureaucrats, the politicians, and the chain of events - both natural and human - that culminated in catastrophe. An epic of cutting- edge science and systemic bureaucratic failure, The Storm is the first book from a major player in the Katrina disaster and a riveting narrative that brings expertise, passion, and a human viewpoint to America’s greatest natural disaster.

The documentary, Hell and High Water, is more than just a selection of interviews with seven residents of New Orleans. It is an oral history of the after effects of Hurricane Katrina as told by the people that live there. Unscripted and unrehearsed the interviews reveal aspects of the disaster that the major media never touched. People have a chance to tell it like they see it, like they experienced it, and express their emotions freely and in their own time. Their inquiries pose some hard questions about the future of their great city, and about the precarious future of our Nation.??They tell a cautionary tale for residents of the United States. They explain the complete collapse of the elected body and how that translates into future disasters for anyone of us that might be exposed to a similar catastrophe. They enlighten us with a deeper understanding of what happened and who is responsible, revealing a truth far beyond what the politicians believe the public actually knows.??Lacking sensationalism but rich on content, Hell and High Water takes the audience down a funny, historical and spiritual road to the events and reactions of this great natural and man-made disaster. This is the 'thinking man's' documentary on Katrina. It touches on what it means for the Superpower of World to neglect its own people in a time of dire need. It touches on what may be the beginning of the end of the American Empire. It touches on how the storm has reminded people of what really matters in their lives and how their humor, strength and faith have sustained them.??This film will lead you on a journey - a journey through time, through politics, through love, loss and hope - a journey of the human heart. This film will change forever the way you look at what really happened along the Gulf Coast in the last days of August 2005. This film will change how you look at your own sense of personal safety and will redefine for you the false notion of 'Homeland Security.' This film will disturb you. This film will encourage us to make new and better choices for our Country.

Still Standing is an intimate portrayal of the challenges faced by Katrina survivors as they rebuild their lives in New York City and in New Orleans. Still Standing puts a human face to the stories of corruption and incompetence that jeopardize the lives and well-being of Katrina survivors six months after the storm. Daina is a single mother looking for housing, employment and the chance to reunite with her children; while Bilal's post-Katrina experiences drive him to become politically active. Bilal's mother, Ms. Gertrude, is a New Orleans homeowner caught in a real estate frenzy. Still Standing reveals familiar issues in American urban communities: the neglect of poor and minority neighborhoods, the inadequacy of public assistance to provide long-term solutions and the struggles necessary to bring about positive change.