5 stars (Of Man and the River) - If you thought Hurricane Katrina packed a devastating whallop to the Louisiana and Mississippi Coast, wait until you read this engrossing story of the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood which inundated the entire Misssissippi Delta. Barry does a great job of providing the background for the levee system which has repeatedly failed the Delta because beauracrats were unwilling to bend to any common sense when it came to handling the mighty Mississippi. They insisted on building their levees higher and wider, channeling the river into a raging torrent come high water. The Army Corps of Engineers chose to cling to outdated manuscripts rather than study the situation first hand, which was repeatedly asked for by civil engineers who saw a monumental crisis in the making.
Barry makes a good case for Eads' proposal for jetties in deepening the mouth of the Mississippi and creating a greater flow of water into the Gulf of Mexico. While this was done primarily to increase navigation into and from the Port of New Orleans, jetties would have made a lot more sense than a system of levees that essentially served to choke the river. To make matters worse the Corps systematically closed off spillways and refused to cut canals even after the 1922 flood should have served as a warning call.
But, Barry treats the rising Mississippi as a metaphorical tool as well, describing Jim Crow South in intimate detail, contrasting the bigoted paternalism of the Percy family with the malignant growth of the Ku Klux Klan, and its impact on Southern politics. It is a well written book that focuses mostly on the Mississippi Delta, the cultural and economic battle for this prized acreage and the river that would ultimately engulf the region.
5 stars (Prophetic and lively read) - John Barry's superb RISING TIDE can be viewed through many prisms, but obviously today, we will all see it through post-Hurricane Katrina eyes. Let it first be said that Barry is a superb writer, with lively prose that vividly portrays colorful characters, intriguing vignettes, and that huge, unrelenting Mississippi River.
He has the trained eye of a detective that picks up subtle-yet-important details, but he also sees the big picture, and does a superb job of connecting actions with long-term consequences. As a native resident of the Deep South, I appreciated his sensitivity and insights into our history, into our overall culture, and into our many varied sub-cultures.
Beyond all of that, we can now see that Barry's insights were not only excellent, but they were prophetic. So many lessons from 1927 and beyond remained unlearned, ticking like a terrible time bomb that detonated in the fury of Katrina and its tragic aftermath. If only this book had been as widely read before Katrina as it is being read now. If you want to understand Louisiana (and Mississippi), and why it is the way it is, this book provides some very important keys.
Paul McCartney once sang, "I go back so far, I'm in front of me." Barry's trip back in time serves as a useful compass for the days ahead. It is useful to study history and learn from it; a clearer understanding of our past assists us in responding to the present and planning for the future.
The flood of 1927 not only changed the history of the Delta, but all of America. It remains to be seen how Hurricane Katrina will affect history, but rest assured that it will not simply be a localized or temporary event. RISING TIDE offers vital clues to us about what lies in front of us.
5 stars (Haunting parallels to the Katrina disaster) - I read "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America" several years ago; the parallels to today's Katrina disaster are eerily similar. This book is a must-read in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Like Katrina, thousands of square miles were flooded in Mississippi and Louisiana in 1927, only by a rain-swollen Mississippi River, not storm surges off the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Southerners were displaced, with many of the black refugees eventually finding a home in the north.
Herbert Hoover's work on relief efforts helped win him the White House, while poor Louisianans' anger and frustration launched populist Huey Long's career in Louisiana and national politics (Long was a later serious threat to Roosevelt's
Racism, inept responses, civil disorder, haves vs. have-nots, disease, massive refugee displacement, mile after mile of flooded Southern countryside, permanent shifts in American politics -- 2005 is in many ways a variation on the 1927 disaster. |
