Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City

by Jed Horne

Hurricane Katrina shredded one of the great cities of the South, and as levees failed and the federal relief effort proved lethally incompetent, a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe. As an editor of New Orleans’ daily newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize—winning Times-Picayune, Jed Horne has had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama of the city’s collapse into chaos and its continuing struggle to survive.

As the Big One bore down, New Orleanians rich and poor, black and white, lurched from giddy revelry to mandatory evacuation. The thousands who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave initially congratulated themselves on once again riding out the storm. But then the unimaginable happened: Within a day 80 percent of the city was under water. The rising tides chased horrified men and women into snake-filled attics and onto the roofs of their houses. Heroes in swamp boats and helicopters braved wind and storm surge to bring survivors to dry ground. Mansions and shacks alike were swept away, and then a tidal wave of lawlessness inundated the Big Easy. Screams and gunshots echoed through the blacked-out Superdome. Police threw away their badges and joined in the looting. Corpses drifted in the streets for days, and buildings marinated for weeks in a witches’ brew of toxic chemicals that, when the floodwaters finally were pumped out, had turned vast reaches of the city into a ghost town.

Horne takes readers into the private worlds and inner thoughts of storm victims from all walks of life to weave a tapestry as intricate and vivid as the city itself. Politicians, thieves, nurses, urban visionaries, grieving mothers, entrepreneurs with an eye for quick profit at public expense–all of these lives collide in a chronicle that is harrowing, angry, and often slyly ironic.

Even before stranded survivors had been plucked from their roofs, government officials embarked on a vicious blame game that further snarled the relief operation and bedeviled scientists striving to understand the massive levee failures and build New Orleans a foolproof flood defense. As Horne makes clear, this shameless politicization set the tone for the ongoing reconstruction effort, which has been haunted by racial and class tensions from the start.
Katrina was a catastrophe deeply rooted in the politics and culture of the city that care forgot and of a nation that forgot to care. In Breach of Faith, Jed Horne has created a spellbinding epic of one of the worst disasters of our time.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, United States, American History, Race, 21st Century

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Jed Horne is the author of “Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City,” published by Random House. Born and educated in Massachusetts, Horne began with the Boston Phoenix, and worked in New York in the 1970’s and 1980’s as a writer and editor, primarily with Time Inc. publications.

He moved to New Orleans in the late 1980’s with his wife and two sons. Except for the early 1990’s when he was posted to Latin America as a foreign correspondent for the Times-Picayune, he worked for the paper as city editor, and more recently, metro editor. Horne’s first book, “Desire Street: A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans,” was nominated for the 2006 Edgar for best non-fiction crime book of the year. It was also runner-up for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award.

Horne’s work was included in submissions by the staff of the Times Picayune that were awarded two Pulitzer Prizes in 2006 for coverage during Hurricane Katrina. A 1970 graduate of Harvard University, Horne and his wife live in the French Quarter where they raised two sons, Jedidiah, and Eli.

Reviews

[Virginia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fascinated with New Orleans, and feel like the response to hurricane Katrina was one of our country's poorest moments. I'm setting a good part of a novel in post-Katrina New Orleans, so I'm reading as much as I can of the disaster.

Horne's book is full of poignancy. The content is sad and horrific and devastating. However, he desperately needed an editor (or two or three). A journalist by trade, Horne seemed to find it necessary to completely cross the spectrum in this foray into a book-length work. The prose is verbose and padded; it rambles and loses its points.

I would have preferred a tighter, newspaper-ish style for this text. It doesn't benefit from the ceaseless metaphors, nor the blatant metaphoric detail. Everything about the disaster is rife with metaphor; give us the information straight and we'll see the parallels on our own.

[Amy Kannel · Rating 1 out of 5]

UGH. I want those hours of my life back.

The further I got in this, the more I hated it. I have no idea why I bothered to finish--guess I was in denial about how long and awful it was. Horne tried the narrative nonfiction style I so loved, and failed miserably. He was in desperate need of an editor. The entire book was a pile of cumbersome, meandering sentences with so many dependent clauses that by the time I got to the end, I forgot what the subject of the sentence was and had to go back and reread it, sometimes more than once. He seemed to go out of his way to use obscure vocabulary that I actually had to look up, only to find in the dictionary a notation that the word was "archaic" or "rare" or "poetic/literary." Really? Come on. The chronology was disordered and confusing, and it was SLOW. I've never been so relieved to finish a book.

The beginning of the book was promising; it at least helped me to better understand the perspectives of the people who did not evacuate ahead of Hurricane Katrina. But it was crisscrossed with too many characters; it lacked a cohesive narrative thread; and worst of all, it failed to convince me that NOLA is indeed a "Great American City." In fact I spent a good part of the second half especially just wanting to throw my Kindle against the wall in disgust over the corruption and waste and stupidity, both at the federal and local levels of government. I think the book was written too soon; it certainly didn't need to be any longer, but it would have benefited from more distance and follow-up (it was published less than a year after the hurricane). And in the end, I was not persuaded that New Orleans should be rebuilt as it was; rather, I was left frustrated and overwhelmed by the complex rat's nest of problems, incompetence and systemic failures that led to the tragedy in the first place and hindered the city's recovery.

[Corinne Zilnicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Hurricane Katrina struck, I was a bewildered 17-year-old high school senior too swept up in my own angst and outrage to really understand the full scope of the worst natural disaster in American history. I was more concerned with the hurricane's direct and horribly inconvenient effects on my life. All my friends are far away! My school's flooded! I'm crammed into a house with far too many people! I'm scared! This isn't FAIR! So on and so forth. I've been sorely tempted to just erase my embarrassing journal entries from those days, but I'm grimly determined to preserve them. My reactions and opinions from those times are important in some way, just as all documentations of the disaster are.

Now, almost 7 years later, I am much more interested in the political, economic, and cultural aspects of the disaster that did so much more than derail my own little life. Luckily, Breach of Faith had a lot to offer in that respect. This book is a combination of personal accounts from survivors, examinations of the government's failings, and explorations of the societal, economic repercussions of the disaster on the city, all built on the author's many interviews with said survivors, government officials, locals, and other authorities.

When a book covers so much ground, I feel that a sturdy organization of themes and thoughts is necessary. With that said, Breach of Faith struck me as a bit disjointed, almost to the point of distraction. It would have benefited greatly from a tighter, more linear structure. And while I found it very enlightening and informative, the strongest portions were the ones focused on the survivors' stories. A few affected me to the point of the dry mouth and tight throat that precede tears.

1 Dead in Attic will be my next Katrina book for that reason. While I'm glad I read this largely factual, informative book, I prefer something a little less dense and English class essay-ish. I want the few misty-eyed moments I experienced in reading this book to be the entire experience. I know I was extremely lucky to have escaped Katrina unscathed (in body, mind, and home) and so I feel compelled to share the experiences of those not so lucky, if only by reading them.

[Jenae · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly comprehensive story of:
a) How different people survived and coped (whether riding it out at home, in the dome/convention center, in nearby states, or thousands of miles away).
b) What happened before and after to create such a disaster:
-The engineering and maintenance faults that weakened the levees
-The political spin that bogged down much of the relief and rebuilding
-The lack of communication and abundance of alarmist media that painted the city in such an unflattering light

Having read this, I feel that I know a whole lot more about the politics that were in play during Katrina and the rebuilding efforts. I also feel much more informed about the engineering behind the levee failures, but I'm not sure whether those passages were suitably unbiased. The army corps got pretty good treatment, but they are an easy scapegoat in literature, if not in court. I think what I liked most about this book was the manner in which it told the story of NOLA's varied citizenship. Some people couldn't evacuate; some simply wouldn't. Some landed far away and put down roots; others stayed away only as long as it took for their kids to finish the school year. The end was fairly dispiriting, discussing how the city's recovery would hinge on having big businesses set up shop in town, a prospect that was looking fairly bleak at the time of publication. The epilogue - written two years after the initial publication? - was slightly more up-beat, discussing the green rebuilding initiatives, community-run services, massive community service projects, etc.

I would like to see the sequel to this book. Now that five years have passed, how are all of those innovative community programs faring? Are there sufficient clinics to care for the uninsured patients who can no longer go to Charity? What is the unified levee board doing? What legacy did Nagin leave to Mayor Landrieu? Who is holding the corps accountable to properly rebuild the levees to the new specs? How will the USACOE's Lake Borgne surge barrier project help block future storm surges? How are Brad Pitt's houses (and their occupants) faring in the Lower 9th?

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Jed Horne, metro editor for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, uses his knowledge of the devastated area to his advantage. In Breach of Faith, he tells some compelling, important stories, despite the amount of coverage that Hurricane Katrina has received over the past year. While the book dutifully describes the events surrounding the disaster, Horne's journalistic skill works against him on occasion. He renders his scenes sharply, if sometimes without passion (as Ceci Connolly puts it, "I found myself yearning for the soul of the Katrina story, the smelly, quirky, gut-wrenching, deadly truth of a city disintegrating"). Most critics find that Horne has created a readable__and sometimes powerful__record of the event.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Krenzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

For many of us, watching the events following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina unfold on our TV screens in August of 2005 was an eye-opening experience. The lasting images of Katrina victims on our TVs telling us of their misery and suffering, while the government seemingly did nothing to intervene, sparked national outrage. In all, Katrina left 1,100 people dead, damaged thousands of residences, crashed the city’s water and sewerage infrastructure, took out electricity and mail service for months, and left four-fifths of the city of New Orleans – seven times the size of Manhattan – underwater. A tragedy on this scale hadn’t struck the United Stance since the San Francisco earthquake, and the victims we watched on the news – stranded at the Superdome or Convention Center or the highway out of town – represented a small fraction of the estimated 250,000 New Orleans residents left homeless by Katrina. In "Breach of Faith," author Jed Horne, a reporter for the local New Orleans paper who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to the paper’s coverage of Katrina, helps explain why this tragedy occurred and what it says about us as a country. Through a series of stories – stories, he says, of heroes, rogues, dreamers, and doers – Horne promises to “provide a lesson for America about itself.”

In fact, these stories are the heart of "Breach of Faith." There is the story of the social service worker watching as chaos descends at the Superdome. There is the story of the New Orleans resident who returns to his family’s home after Katrina to find an X, code for dead, marking the family house, and the story of his struggle for months fighting FEMA bureaucracy to recover the remains of his father for a proper burial. There is the particularly affecting story of the doctor at the city hospital, serving the poorest of New Orleans residents, as the hospital waits for a week to be evacuated, all the while hearing the sound of helicopters rescuing patients from New Orleans’ other, richer hospitals. There is the story of the former levee board president, boating across the drowned city and finding his biggest surprise to be the city’s utter silence – no police, no firemen, no one. And then there is the story of the local paper’s photographer, who also notes the utter lack of help, the utter lack of government presence whatsoever. A fellow photographer takes the famous picture of the woman who will become a Katrina icon as she slumps to her knees, wrings her hands, and begs, "Help Us."

"Breach of Faith" isn’t just the story of Katrina victims, but also of this silence, this utter lack of help for the city of New Orleans. It is the story of the FEMA director who is more concerned with finding a dogsitter and making dinner plans than the suffering on the ground in New Orleans. It is the story of the Homeland Security chief who tells the American people that Katrina was unprecedented and couldn’t have been anticipated when, in fact, the whole scenario had not only been anticipated but simulated in a disaster drill just a year earlier. It is the story of insurance companies not honoring Katrina victims' policies but instead leaving coverage up to the federal government, prompting a lawsuit joined by staunch conservative Senator Trent Lott. It is the story of the Army Corps of Engineers who did such a poor job of constructing levees to protect the city from floodwaters that one scientist compared it to "putting bricks on Jello-O." And it is the story of President Bush, strumming on his guitar in San Diego as all this misery is taking place. Three days after Katrina hits, during his plane trip back to Washington, DC, Air Force One flies over New Orleans, leaving a lasting image of Bush in the clouds, peering out the windows to steal a glance at one of the worst disasters in American history from far above.

Through these stories, Horne puts the reader in New Orleans and provides us with a deeper understanding of this man-made disaster, dispelling media myths and explaining the complex series of events that contributed to cause this disaster. Although structuring his book through these stories is somewhat flawed – it is difficult to keep track of the characters and the second half of the book loses steam in focusing on the technical rather than the personal stories of Katrina – Horne succeeds in showing that Katrina is not just a New Orleans story, but rather it is an American story. These are stories of people anyone can relate to – people like us, in situations that could happen to any of us.

But ultimately the lesson about America Horne promised readers is unclear. "Breach of Faith" begins and ends with the story of Patrina Peters. At the beginning of the book, the 43-year-old mother living in the Lower Ninth clings to a mattress with her daughter, certain that they will both be killed by the floodwaters. Fortunately, they are saved, then dropped off at the Superdome and eventually displaced to a bland upriver town. At the end of the book, Peters decides she misses New Orleans and her church too much and must return – her faith has not been breached. Like Patrina Peters’ story, though, the story behind "Breach of Faith" is unfinished, for we as readers are left to wonder, is Peters' faith justified? Will she make it in New Orleans? According to an article in The New York Times, it is up to us as Americans to determine the fate of New Orleans: will be contribute the funding and vision necessary to rebuild this great city, or will we let it die? This part of the story -- the true lesson about America -- has yet to be written.

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're going to read a book about Katrina then this and Jordan Flaherty's Floodlines should give you a pretty good idea of the pandora's box of political, social, and environment issues that emerged in New Orleans after the levees breached. I would also kick in watching Spike Lee's provocative When the Levees Broke and Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's documentary Trouble the Water and Harry Shearer's The Big Uneasy and the second season of Treme. Okay, that's my shortlist. But Horne does a good job bringing human faces to the compelling stories mostly surrounding the levee breaches. He follows a broad range of New Orleanians through the storm and during the recovery. Some of the first chapters are terrifying laden with that absurdity that struck us all--how could this happen here in the US? Horne never really answers that question though he does bring this question up. His job is mainly to be a journalist who was in the thick of it but who attempts some amount of objectivity. I became more sympathetic to Kathleen Blanco after reading this book and learned a lot about the various ways in which what should have gotten done after the storm didn't or did eventually. Some of the chapters are focused specifically on how the breaches happened, who was hired to analyze why it happened, and who was hired to clean it up. Other chapters cover the crappy ways in which the federal gov't refused to commit funds to people who lost their home and weren't insured to hiring a bunch of carpetbaggers to carry out the work of FEMA and CoE, but no surprise there with Bush & Co at the helm: free market disaster politics reigned which makes The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein worth reading to understand how disaster spurs capitalism and leaves victims of those disasters, especially the most vulnerable with little support or resources to survive.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

During my first visit to New Orleans I fell in love with the culture, especially the people. My perception of NOLA before this visit was that Bourbon Street was it's only attraction and that Katrina had flooded the entire city including the French Quarter. After talking to many different locals from many different walks of life - several cab drivers, shop owners, waiters, waitresses, bell hops, hotel staff, a young man standing in line (a long line) behind us to get coffee and a lady sitting on a bench in front of her home - I became very confused about my recollection of the news coverage of Katrina and what I was witnessing firsthand. I went to a family owned bookstore on 823 Chartres Street in the French Quarter in search of a book that would help me understand the politics behind the Katrina rescue efforts. I didn't want a book laced with bias but at the same time felt it important that it was written by someone reputable from the area. There were tons of books re: Katrina so I spoke to the bookstore owner for quite sometime asking her lot's of questions and explaining to her exactly what I was looking for. Breach of Faith was it. Fantastic book! The author did an excellent job of interpreting a very emotional event and including perspectives from all parties involved.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a generally good nonfiction account of Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath on the people and culture of New Orleans. Best chapters dealt with the stories of people affected by the storm; I especially liked the chapter on how the staff at public Charity hospital downtown did their technology-dependent jobs without electricity. The later chapters bogged down in dealing with back stabbing politicians, litigation hungry lawyers, and the like. Horne's account does not paint a pretty picture of George W., FEMA, or Homeland Security, but it does explain why, with a war in Iraq fought off-the-books, Katrina may have been seen as "just another" big ticket item. The book also raises thorny questions. New Orleans is a great city, but is it worth saving? Is there wisdom in rebuilding on a swamp turned floodplain that is below sea level and surrounded by Lake Ponchatrain, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico? My advice: enjoy New Orleans while you can.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing book, full of facts as well as personal stories about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and its people.

The author was an editor at a New Orleans daily newspaper and covered the story as it happened - and interviewed dozens of people afterward to round out the picture of what happened both during the storm and afterward, including the total failure of leadership from the city or the feds. (For example - dozens of schoolbuses were available that could have helped evacuate people without cars - but they sat idle, and simply flooded when the water rose.)

The book was published in 2006 - ie a year after the storm. So it doesn't provide a picture of the longer term recovery, especially as the US went through the financial crisis of 2008-9. It would be useful to have an update now.

Nevertheless, this gives a very thorough and balanced picture from the vantage of 2006.

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good. Coming up on the 10th anniversary of Katrina's passing this book deserves a re-read. New Orleans is a city without equal and if you've had the privilege of spending time there you can probably attest to this. Horne's attention to detail is what really sells this book for me. I had to start over from the beginning about three times in between breaks before I finished it because I'd forgotten details that I knew would be important later in the work. The book's account of what the Superdome was like in the days following Katrina and how rumors started, spread and played a role in shaping the media frenzy and racial overtones to media coverage was quite interesting. I was definitely partial to the more "human" aspects of this book - the stories from New Orleanians themselves, but I did find Horne's delving into the political and environmental worlds helpful for making the book a much more journalistic affair. The political wheeling and dealing described in this book is really something - from the contentious relationship between the Louisiana Governor and the Bush administration to the corrupt levee boards to the Army Corps Engineers - so I can only image what was actually taking place especially in light of former Mayor Nagin's recent sentencing to federal prison. Overall I would definitely recommend reading this if you have any interest in city politics, planning, dysfunction or want a way to be able to look back on this time in New Orleans. All praise to Horne, his collaborators, his assistants and his interviewees. His work here made me want to pick up the The Times-Picayune and I don't even live in New Orleans.

[Redsteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent. I'd give it a 5 except I'd it only covers the period up to just before the next hurricaine season after Katrina. I'd rather it ran further - at least to a full year after the Storm. I was also suprised that there was very little about the controversy surrounding the 1st post-Katrina Mardi Gras (which was a big deal at the time). So, instead of a "5", I'd have to give it a "4.5" if I was allowed to award half points. That being said, this is THE book about the Storm and its aftermath. It's told in a way similar to Massey's Dreadnaught, telling the stories of many different people in a way to make the reader understand a complicated event. The range of people this book deals with is pretty damn comprehensive: the wealthy and the impoverished, those who stayed and those who fled (both before and after the Storm), those who returned and those who (at least to this point) did not, politicians (local and national) and bureaucrats (likewise), first responders, FEMA, Red Cross, local activists, lawyers, the military, small business owners and major developers, storm chasers and meteorologists, doctors, nurses and EMTs, hydrologists and engineers, children and the elderly, journalists, rescuers and those who had to be rescued (as well as those forced to rescue themselves) - the list goes on. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to get a good picture of Katrina, the flooding of New Orleans and the aftermath of both.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how this book came to my attention - perhaps it showed up in some of the reading I was doing about Hurricane Harvey. I had not been familiar with Jed Horne of the New Orleans Times-Picayune before reading this book, but if I see anything else written by him, I'll be sure to read it too.

Horne does not go into great detail about the actual hurricane itself, instead he concentrates more on the effect on the people of the city. He follows several different families from the approach of the storm when no one was sure where it would make landfall and people had to decide whether or not to evacuate (if they were even able to get away) through the aftermath.

There is also a great deal of information about the recovery efforts and details about the investigation of why the levees failed and the struggle to get enough money to rebuild a city that was mostly under water for weeks.

It's well written and a good read. I would have finished it a lot faster if I had been able to get my hands on an ebook copy, since I would have read it in bed and probably stayed up way too late finishing it. (Checked out a hardback copy from the local library) I may still splurge on my own ebook copy; it might be interesting to compare New Orleans to Houston in the coming months.

[Lee Fritz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Post-Katrina New Orleans is a particular interest of mine as I traveled to the great city a few times before and a few times after the horrible 2005 event. This book was a very well documented study into the people and ideas surrounding the before- during- and after-timeframes of Katrina. Not an uplifting read, but I felt more well informed by this single experience than by all of the news or other outlets put together. Looking back, the breadth of topics covered makes this book seem so comprehensive and respectful of the city's residents. Instead of presenting hear wrenching human interests, the matter of fact is shown with respect to economics, politics, engineering, human survival, religion, urban planning, as well as the terror associated with a disaster of this magnitude. I plan to revisit this book in the future, as the big ideas covered in such a setting seem more important than daily life. The essence of the American human existence is explored, whether the good or the bad. One is left hoping we can learn from the experience.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm preparing for my first trip to NOLA this October, so I'm trying to learn more about the city. Obviously, Hurricane Katrina is now a huge part of the city's history, and has spawned many books on the topic. I picked up Horne's book, as it had the best reviews.
I really enjoyed the first half, as it chronicles several different people and their journey through the storm, from evacuees to Super Dome social workers to Mercy Hospital doctors. Where Horne started to lose me was the minute detail of the recovery effort; specifically, a lot of technical details about levee flood walls and how much money to ask of Congress. It's obvious that while the first part was written based on some great interviews asking people to recall the storm, the second half seemed to be written as recovery efforts unfolded in real time, and that's why Horne could spend pages talking about which people were part of which local agency and that agency's agenda and who was lobbying Congress and how much money they wanted and so on. It gets really tedious at some points.

[Kellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book I could not finish. This was supposed to be an interesting account of Hurricane Katrina. I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon. One said “A concise, easy-to-follow insight that is unaffected, balanced and truthful.” So, I thought I was going to read a truthful, unbiased narrative about Hurricane Katrina and the people affected. Instead, I read someone’s opinion with political spin. I kept reading to page 231 hoping there was a shift in style, but there wasn’t. I’m tired of it. There were some interesting accounts of people who were in the middle of the storm. That’s why the rating is a 2 and not a 1. The most disappointing aspect of this book was the fact the author calls himself a journalist. In my book, a journalist reports the facts and lets the reader form their own opinions.

[Coralie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jed Horne, a newspaper reporter, explores many issues surrounding Hurricane Katrina. He follows four or five families who lived in New Orleans, a few that made it out, a few who didn't, a few who returned to New Orleans and a few who chose to relocate. He discusses local, state and federal officials and the decisions they made before, during and after the storm. He also discusses the long and short term prognosis for the recovery of New Orleans. Another good book is "Rising Tide" by John Barry. "Rising Tide" is a book about the flood of 1927, when the levees were broken north of New Orleans to prevent New Orleans from being flooded. In "Rising Tide", Barry warns that decisions that were being made regarding the wetlands around New Orleans set the city up for a huge disaster. It was written in 1977.

[Guy Choate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've lived in New Orleans for two years since 2010 and most of the information I have on the storm has been absorbed through day-to-day interaction. This book did a good job of getting down to the nitty gritty of the ordeal that would be too dry for conversation. Unfortunately, it can also be a little dry in a book as well. However, it's good information to acquire. And the first half of the book, which focuses on the specific lives of people as they navigate the actual disaster, is absolutely riveting.

In the end, this book makes me feel for those trapped by the storm and the bureaucracy of our government. The book accomplishes its goal of explaining exactly what happened immediately before, during, and the year or so after Hurricane Katrina. And, ultimately, it makes me distrust politicians and hate the game they play with our lives.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've recently become very very interested in learning about Hurricane Katrina especially the eye-witness accounts but also what happened to our government and why they failed so miserably. Breach of Faith was a good read on both accounts. I came away with a better understanding of the politics involved - Mayor Nagin's choice to wait before issuing a mandatory evacuation and why, Blanco's decisions and head butting with D.C. to allocate money, etc. I would be very interested in learning more about Michael Brown and how he and FEMA failed, failed, failed in so many ways.

Jed Horne provided a lot of detail and background information which really put the people and places in to perspective.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing/reporting style was a little too fractured and non-linear for my liking, but the (true) stories themselves are harrowing and deeply discouraging, but not without hope. The preparedness and response of the Bush administrations FEMA was inexcusable, sinful really, and the human suffering detailed in this book makes that failure palpable. Good exploration (but no resolution) of the ultimate causes for the failure of emergency response, government control, and the levees themselves...ultimately, this book is not a tidy package, but neither is the story of Katrina or the continuing and saddening saga of New Orleans herself.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a class and maybe it's because we spent half a semester reading it that it seemed to drag on after the first half. Regardless, though, this book is filled to the brim with investigative, compelling facts that taught me much about a situation I knew nothing about. It wasn't a topic or a book I would have explored if not for my class but I'm so glad I did with all I've learned. Still, though, it does get a big draggy and repetitive and it's easy to confuse the characters after a while (I couldn't remember which was which for almost all of them in the summary) but I would still implore people to at least read the first half of this book.

[Shelley Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great from the frontlines story about katrina and the havoc that followed. jed horne bases the book on over 2 dozen interviews and the stories that came from them, stories that span the wards of the city aa well as the various socio-economic, race, gender, and age groups that inhabited them. horne doesnt just tell the stories of new orlean's inhabitants, but he provides and in-depth (sometimes heavy) chronicle of the science behind the levee failures and a fairly low-bias critique of the post-katrina politics that continue to clog the recovery effort.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book I finally feel like I have well-formed knowledge of what happened in New Orleans leading up to, and immediately after Katrina. Horne did an excellent job of presenting the events and cutting through all of the crap media spin and politics and just laying it all out there. His account is definitely the least biased that I have read so far, and at least to this reader, it felt like finally placing the blame where it was due. I would recommend this to anyone wanting a better understanding of the events of Katrina, both personal and political.

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book was a solid 4 to 4 1/2 stars, but then author Jed falls into a great big hole - a discussion of all of the politics swirling around the different individuals and agencies partly responsible for the disastrous aftermath of Katrina and/or working to solve the endless problems - and he doesn't climb back out until the very last chapter of the book. He closes by coming back around to his chronicling of the personal experiences of a dozen or so survivors. That is his strong suit and what makes this book worth reading.

[Jim Kelsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The local, state, and national response to Hurricane Katrina continues to be a national disgrace. Jed Horne's book details not only this familiar story, but the human stories as well as the human toll...noble and not so noble. Douglas Brinkley's terrific "The Great Deluge" gave us the the first high level view of this disaster; but Horne takes us to the streets. A little wonky towads the end, but a rich and affecting view of the street level tales of survival, greed, and in some cases, some sort of triumph.

[Jim Duggan · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone who was trying to learn more about New Orleans and the impact of Katrina, this was a fascinating and insightful account, if somewhat ambitious. The book essentially starts with the weather forecasts and predictions of the hurricane's path, through the hurricane itself and covers the early recovery efforts. I found my interest flagged a bit as I made my way through the book simply because of the breadth of the material; it was overwhelming to try to take it all in.
Still a worthwhile read with many questions posed that still require answers.

[Marilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was attracted to this book because the author was a Times Picayune reporter and their coverage during Katrina was a award winning. The book did not disappoint. As expected it was a detailed account of what went wrong with plenty of blame to go around. However, what I loved most about it was the stories of ordinary people who were swept up in the storm and how the author wove these stories together. Amazing!

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to read---there is not a real sense of how it strings together, which is a shame, because it exposes some of the post-Katrina personalities and moments that shaped the present state of things in New Orleans. If you're studying Katrina, especially as a student, read it and be prepared to highlight and dogear. If you just want to understand Katrina from a human perspective, go to Chris Rose's 1 Dead in the Attic.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depressing, but very well written, account of hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Horne, who was the city editor for the Times-Picayune, writes with the knowledge and nuance of a local. He does an excellent job humanizing the many people whose lives the disaster overturned, and this book left me shocked at the failure of our response. I hope we don't let this happen again, but I fear we have not learned the lessons that we should have. Which is why this is an important read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of blame to go around for this disaster - feds, state, local, mayor. First half is harrowing account of the storm's early stages; the latter is an analysis of the many things that went wrong. This book debunks many of the myths we have come to believe about Katrina and lays out very well the reason how the city survived the hurricane, only to be destroyed by a flood.