Sunday, July 08, 2007

The Essential Hurricane Katrina Nonfiction Reading List

Today's Times-Picayune has a story on nonfiction Katrina books, focusing on a second wave of more recent works. (I couldn't find the link on the T-P's website. They really need to improve their site.) I've read some of the books and generally liked them. Here is the list:
  1. 1 Dead in Attic -- After Katrinaby Chris Rose. This is a new, expanded edition of his original bestseller (link here), including coverage up to January 2007.
  2. City Adrift: New Orleans Before & After Katrinaby Jenni Bergal, Sara Shipley Hiles, Frank Koughan, John McQuaid and Jim Morris.
  3. Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoirby Dr. Richard Deichmann, chief of medicine at Memorial Medical Center.
  4. Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned Cityby Billy Sothern.
  5. Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in its Disaster Zone, A MemoirbyJoshua Clark. A portrait of people in the Quarter banding together for survival in the aftermath of the storm.
  6. Hurricane Almanac: The Essential Guide to Storms Past, Present and Futureby Bryan Norcross, a meteorologist.
  7. Hurricane Season: A Coach, His Team and Their Triumph in the Season of Katrinaby Neal Anderson. How parents, teachers and students at John Curtis came together for their most challenging football season.
  8. Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember, photography by Melody Golding, edited by Sally Pfister. Photographs and narratives of women's experiences during and after the storm.
  9. Katrinaville Chronicles: Images and Observations from a New Orleans Photographerby David Spielman.
  10. No Ordinary Heroes: 8 Doctors, 30 Nurses, 7,000 Prisoners and a Category 5 Hurricaneby Dr. Demaree Inglese with Diana G. Gallagher. An account by the medical director of the Orleans Parish Prison.
  11. Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warmingby Chris Mooney, looks at the scientific debate over whether global warming has caused larger, more intense storms or whether this is the result of ordinary cyclical changes.
  12. Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and his Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Rememberby Michael Tisserand. The former Gambit editor recounts how Lusher first grade teacher Paul Reynaud created a one-room schoolhouse in New Iberia for displaced children.
  13. What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nationedited by the South End Press Collective.
  14. Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Securityby Wall Street Journal reporters Chris Cooper (formerly of the Times-Picayune) and Robert Block.
  15. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coastby Douglas Brinkley.
  16. The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Citiesby Mike Tidwell.
  17. The Storm -- What Went Wrong and Why -- The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientistby Ivor van Heerden with Mike Bryan.

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