KATRINA

A New Orleans–focused history that demonstrates the complex political and social factors involved in natural disasters and their aftermaths.

In an incisive book debut, historian Horowitz argues persuasively that the destruction incurred by Hurricane Katrina was not merely a meteorological event, but part of a long process of political, environmental, economic, and cultural decisions. “Disasters,” he writes, “are less discrete events than they are contingent processes.” Although disasters may “seem acute…their causes are long in the making and their effects last a very long time” because vulnerability is socially constructed, with roots in poverty, racism, and inequality. Horowitz focuses on New Orleans history from 1927, when a struggle to control Louisiana’s oil resources erupted in a conflict among “competing political, economic, and social visions.” Instead of managing public lands responsibly, wealthy partisans prevailed, exploiting oil-rich areas for their own advantage. Bolstered by the construction of canals and levees, oil production transformed Louisiana, increasing its population and access to jobs in the oil industry. Only when the federal government regulated off-shore drilling in the early 1950s did environmental concerns rise to the forefront. Destruction caused by Hurricane Betsy in 1965 underscored the connection between natural and political forces. In the largely African American Lower Ninth Ward, more than 6,000 houses flooded and 50 people drowned. Occurring in the midst of the civil rights era, the hurricane’s devastation raised questions about why the Lower Ninth was a particularly vulnerable area and what responsibility the state and federal government had to offer restitution for the people harmed. “Many,” Horowitz writes, “understood the debates about Betsy’s causes and consequences as a struggle over what American citizenship was, or ought to be, worth.” As he convincingly demonstrates, Hurricane Katrina, and the response to destruction, highlighted the complex forces that led to disaster: “canal building, coastal erosion, climate change, metropolitan subsidence, failed levees, mandatory evacuation, and decades of local, state, and federal housing policy.”

An eye-opening environmental history.