| View Larger Image | Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security | Paperbackby Christopher Cooper (Author), Robert Block (Author)
| List Price: | $16.00 | | Price: | $13.68 | | You Save: | $2.32 (14%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Holt Paperbacks | | Edition: | 1stst Edition | | Page Count: | 352 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 29, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 161,677st |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780805086508
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
“[A] tightly crafted, very readable book . . . the best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get.”—Stephen Flynn, The Washington Post When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring. In this searing indictment of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block take readers inside FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during the crisis—the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, and the individuals who saw that the system was broken but did nothing to fix it.In this award-winning and critically acclaimed book, Cooper and Block reconstruct the crucial days before and after the storm hit, laying bare the government’s inability to respond to the most elemental needs. They also demonstrate how the Bush administration’s obsessive focus on terrorist threats fatally undermined the government’s ability to respond to natural disasters. The incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 15 reviews)
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Maddening to read, but worth the time by Amy Russell (Southern DE USA)  5 Stars
July 08, 2008
Maddening to read, this is a very clear-eyed and even-handed account of the government's response to Katrina. The book includes a nice background on the levy system in New Orleans (and some reasons for its disrepair) as well as a history of FEMA. I enjoyed the way everything was laid out in an easy, linear manner, with quotes from Senate testimony and clarifications about surrounding events added as necessary.
I found myself reading the book like I was watching a movie, picking out characters that were supposed to be the "good guys" or the "bad guys", but the authors potrayed the people as humans. Even the most capable people in this situation made mistakes, and the authors don't hesitate to point them out. This book is not a complete blame-fest, but it doesn't let anyone off the hook either. Some people come out better than others, but it feels like a very accurate picture of the mess, as opposed to the overwrought Katrina footage we all saw on TV in the immediate aftermath.
I really liked some of the stories about the unique characters in the government and in New Orleans. Reading this book reminded me just how well some people worked to get through this disaster and help their neighbors. It also reminded me how frustrating it was to watch the government drop the ball in such a spectacular fashion. My favorite quote from the book: "St. Bernard Parish, which was swamped to the eaves and had about 6,000 residents standing on the rooftops, was largely ignored by rescuers until Wednesday, when a forty-seven-man contingent of canadian Mounties arrived." (pg. 181)
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Katrina by R. Kendall (Charleston, WV USA)  4 Stars
March 30, 2008
Seems to do a real good job. As an anything like this, it takes a lot of people a lot of time to mess up something this bad. Will be better analyzed by "experts" several years from now, especially after some of the repairs/remediation have been tested with say a "minor" hurricane. I'm not an expert or even close, but everybody has known people that went down there to help that couldn't do anything because of whatever (basically disorganization/dysfuntion) and just came home (some had some sucess particularly other La & Miss). Have had the opportunity to work with Corps Of Engineer on other things and like any large governmental agency some things work real well but a lot doesn't, most of which seems to be their own bureaucacy. Of course they are not completely at fault, but they, the city & the state are probably all guilty. Particularly liked the explanation/idea that the Feds and/or the Military wanted to take control. Pretty sure they are still trying to do this, for a lot of different reasons, but one is to just get more power/money (and for some weak/poor areas, they may be right). One of the bigger issues is what should we the people and government really do/spend on these areas to include much of Florida, in regards to saving/protecting something that is almost impossible to protect, is very very expensive to protect, and/or actually wrong to protect (e.g. Everglades, Mississippi River over engineering). Some of these things are owned by very rich people/corporations. If I owned property built in a Hurricane prone area, I would like the government to save me/my money too. I'll never forget walking down the road in Vietnam and seeing an Esso and station sign, and I thought to myself, what am I really here for. Of course, since then I've realized it isn't that simple, but some of it is.
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Oddly compelling by Cartoon lover (Mid west) 5 Stars
October 27, 2007
I say this because the book was very difficult to put down, certainly surprising because it is reporting on a recent event with known results. Certainly, the book is not a dry recitation of events.
I will say this right off - some of my opinions about who was at fault from the Federal response changed as a result of reading the book. I am less inclined to blame the Bush White house (and I am no fan of Bush Administration). However, it is also plainly obvious that the response failed on Federal, State and local levels - primarily because of bureaucracy. This is not to say that some things went well - New Orleans was 80% evacuated for example when the storm hit.
The authors have also listed many of their references both in the book and on their website. Two of the big ones are readily accessible on the Internet - the Bipartisan report and the White house report. Anyone may review those documents who care to. The link is:
http://www.disasterthebook.com/links/
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An Enlightening Perspective by Daniel Farber (Berkeley CA) 5 Stars
August 24, 2007
Other books do better than this one in describing the human impact of Katrina. But this is far and away the best book that I've seen about the series of mistakes that led to the botched response. There were lots of individual failures, but the authors also make it clear that there were massive organizational issues -- issues, I might add, that still have not been fully addressed by Congress or the administration.
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Good example of a bad example. by Felix Dzerzhinsky (Phnom Penh, Cambodia) 5 Stars
November 17, 2006
This is a well written tale of how government can get out of touch with reality.
I was completely flabbergasted by the obsession for irrelevant detail Mathew Broderick demanded in the Homeland Security Operations Center. I thought the Marines worked from the idea of the 70% Solution. On the battlefield or in a Disaster you are never going to have the full picture. You just have to go to war with the 70% you do know. This is well covered in "Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines" by David H. Freedman.
The hero of the book for me was Craig Fugate the man who rose from being a firefighter and paramedic to become Florida's Emergency Manager. It is a tragedy for you Americans that he did not take the post of head of FEMA.
At the end of the day the message you get from this book is you are on your own. You might want to dust off your copies of Mel Tappan "On Survival" after you read this.
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| Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change After Catastrophic Events (American Governance and Public Policy)
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Even before the wreckage of a disaster is cleared, one question is foremost in the minds of the public: "What can be done to prevent this from happening again?" Today, news media and policymakers often invoke the "lessons of September 11" and the "lessons of Hurricane Katrina." Certainly, these unexpected events heightened awareness about problems that might have contributed to or worsened the disasters, particularly about gaps in preparation. Inquiries and investigations are made that claim...
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