Just a few of our fave reads about Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans... 

drop Katelm at onebrick dotorg a line if you have new suggestions to share!

Lost in Katrina

·       Hardcover: 368 pages

·       Publisher: Pelican Publishing (August 30, 2007)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 1589805119

·       ISBN-13: 978-1589805118

Emotional first-person accounts tell of the destruction faced by one parish on August 29, 2005, and the days that followed. While attention and resources were focused on New Orleans, survival became the ultimate goal of the neighboring parish of St. Bernard. An unprecedented 99 percent of the parish was submerged in water and almost all buildings were destroyed. Each account is filled with the heartwrenching reality of a community lost and the strength it took to rise again.

Flood of Lies: The St. Rita's Nursing Home Tragedy

·       Hardcover: 320 pages

·       Publisher: Pelican Publishing (July 26, 2013)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 145561789X

·       ISBN-13: 978-1455617890

Defending Hurricane Katrina's most notorious couple. In the media storm that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, nursing home owners Sal and Mabel Mangano were vilified for allegedly causing the deaths of 35 residents of St. Rita's Nursing Home in low-lying St. Bernard Parish. This book, written by the lawyer who defended them, reveals the gripping, true story behind the couple's heartrending decision not to evacuate and their persecution at the hands of the government sworn to protect them.

Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans

·       Paperback: 368 pages

·       Publisher: Spiegel & Grau; Reprint edition (February 16, 2010)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 0385523203

·       ISBN-13: 978-0385523202

Nines Lives is a multivoiced biography of a dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city, told through the lives of nine unforgettable characters and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed New Orleans in the 1960s, and Hurricane Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. Dan Baum brings this kaleidoscopic portrait to life, showing us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved.

Zeitoun

·       Paperback: 368 pages

·       Publisher: Vintage; 1 Reprint edition (June 15, 2010)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 0307387941

·       ISBN-13: 978-0307387943

The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina.
 
Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.

1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina

·       Paperback: 364 pages

·       Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 21, 2007)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 1416552987

·       ISBN-13: 978-1416552987

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 survivors and believers, stories of hope 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.

Frommer's New Orleans

·       Paperback: 384 pages

·       Publisher: Frommers; 17 edition (January 10, 2012)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 1118074068

·       ISBN-13: 978-1118074060

·       Hundreds of color photos

·       Free pocket map inside,plus easy-to-read maps throughout

·       Exact prices, directions, opening hours,and other practical information

·       Candid reviews of hotels and restaurants,plus sights, shopping, and nightlife

·       Itineraries, walking tours, and trip-planning ideas

·       Insider tips from local expert authors

Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey through Our Last Great Wetland

·       Hardcover: 240 pages

·       Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (April 26, 2011)

·       Language: English

·       ISBN-10: 1608195813

·       ISBN-13: 978-1608195817

In the spring of 2010, as we watched oil gushing unstoppably into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, many Americans turned their focus to the region for the first time, wondering how this could happen and demanding corporate and government accountability. Yet Rowan Jacobsen brings a surprising perspective to the tragedy: as bad as the spill was, it is only the latest chapter in a century-long story of destruction. 

At the height of BP's dispersant madness, the amount sprayed each day merely equaled the amount of dispersant that washes down the Mississippi from the Heartland's dishwashers and washing machines. Coastal drilling has damaged the region's ecology far more than offshore drilling. And the acres of marshland ruined by oil slicks can't compare to the amount that disappears in every hurricane, due to the work of the Army Corps of Engineers. Southern Louisiana is subsiding. Even if we succeed in restoring every mile of beach and wetland from the oil spill, the entire Mississippi Delta could be lost this century, and New Orleans will sink beneath the waves, an American Atlantis.
Surveying the Gulf Coast by sailboat, skiff, car, and kayak, Jacobsen journeys from the bayous of Terrebonne Parish, where he goes on oil patrol with a Native American man whose tribe is being displaced as their island disintegrates; to the last shucking house in New Orleans's French Quarter, whose oyster supply has vanished; to the pristine barrier islands of Mississippi, where a Kafkaesque cleanup effort is underway. He discovers a little-appreciated ecological wonder of breathtaking natural beauty and rich culture struggling to hold on to the things that have always sustained it.
Shadows on the Gulf details the catastrophe creeping across the region and reveals why the damage to the Gulf will affect us all. Not only are the Gulf's wetlands the best oyster reefs and fish nurseries in the world, they also provide critical habitat to most of America's migratory songbirds and waterfowl. If the Gulf is allowed to fail, the effects will ripple across America. And fail it will, unless BP's blunder can somehow galvanize a national effort to save it.