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America and the world were stunned in August 2005 as Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed New Orleans. Shocking images seared the national consciousness: a city under water; entire families pulled from holes chopped in rooftops; children begging for water outside the convention left; hundreds of people waiting for days in hundred-degree heat alongside an interstate for buses that seemed never to arrive. To grasp how Katrina could happen in twenty-first-century America, you have to understand the untold backstory of the catastrophe, from New Orleans’s centuries-long flirtation with disaster, to the heroic attempts by a handful of local scientists and officials to sound warning bells, to the ignorant and misguided decisions by politicians, bureaucrats, and engineers that set the stage for the catastrophe. In Path Of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms (Little, Brown and Company; August 16, 2006; $25.99), John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, give a full account of the storm and the dreadful inadequacies that existed prior to 2005, an indictment of the officials at all levels who failed to act, and a scientific investigation into why these huge storms have only just begun.

From Inside Flap

On August 29. 2005, near the peak of a busy storm season, Hurricane Katrina rose up out of the roiling Gulf of Mexico and barreled into southeastern Louisiana with astonishing fury. Within moments, rising water overwhelmed the shoddily designed levees and poured into New Orleans, killing a thousand people, destroying billions of dollars' worth of property, and stranding tens of thousands. Scenes we expect to see only in far-off countries took place in our own backyard: a gumbo of human waste from sewage plants and gasoline from flooded cars; corpses sloshing through the streets; a storied city reduced to a ghost town. And back at the White House and in the corridors of FEMA, a disaster of a different sort was unfolding.

Now, one year later, award-winning journalists John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein give us the most comprehensive account of how and why Katrina happened. But Path of Destruction isn't just a book about the hurricane, those who survived, and those who didn't; it's also an account of the dreadful inadequacies and warning signs that existed prior to 2005, an indictment of the officials who failed to act, and a scientific investigation into why these superstorms are coming now—and why even more may be on the way. Drawing upon historical records, cutting-edge geology, and the latest climatology studies, McQuaid and Schleifstein reveal how changes in the earth's atmosphere, and the choices made by people and politicians, have created conditions that suggest the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf may be only the beginning.

Combining exclusive firsthand accounts of the storm and its aftermath with the latest science, Path of Destruction is a brilliant investigation into who was left behind, what's to come, and why. For anyone who has tried to understand what happened in New Orleans and what is on the horizon, John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein's book is essential reading.

Contents

“Introduction

1 City on the Delta

2 River and Storm

3 1927 and 1965

4 The Levees

5 Sinking Feeling

6 "We're Going to Need a Lot of Body Bags"

7 Homeland Security

8 Katrina

9 "This Is the Big One"

10 The Flood

11 Tuesday

12 Wednesday, August 31

13 Thursday, September 1

14 Friday and Saturday, September 2–3

15 Aftermath

16 Super Storms

Notes on Sources

Acknowledgments”

Tags: USHistory, HurricaneKatrina

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