Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms

by Mark Schleifstein and John McQuaid

Book Overview

At 5:02 A.M. on August 29, 2005, Power Went Out in the Superdome. Not long after, wind ripped giant white rubber sheets off the roof and sent huge shards of debris flying toward Uptown. Rivulets of rainwater began finding their way down through the ceiling, dripping and pouring into the stands, the mezzanine, and the football field. Without ventilation, the air began to get gamy with the smell of sweat and garbage. The bathrooms stopped working...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031601642X
• ISBN13: 9780316016421
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Katrina and survival

I am a Katrina survivor and, of course, am interested in all things written about this storm and its aftermath. This is the best of all that I have read and reads like a great novel with good descriptions of the devastation as well as the principles involved.

The only Katrina book you need to read

This is not your typical Hurricane Katrina book, and that's why you need to read it. Of all the books I've read about the storm, this book best explains what happened to lead up to the events of Aug 29, 2005. The other reviewers have really summed the book up well.

Thoughtful, Informative and Readable

Path of Destruction provides an in-depth background to the geographic, technical and political contributions to the Katrina disaster. It describes the natural challenges of settling on the active Mississippi delta, the innately human bone-headed attempts to protect settlements on an increasingly vulnerable marshland, and the classic political forces (farces?) over the centuries that made problems worse, and it does it all in a very readable way. I grew up in New Orleans, and visit family there often, so I thought I understood the growing threat from hurricanes, yet McQuaid and Schleifstein filled in the gaps, and corrected common misconceptions; it is impressively well researched. (The horrendous tale of the response to the great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 alone is worth the price of admission.) This is what I would call a "crossover book": Even if you're sick of hearing about Katrina-this and New Orleans-that, this book is interesting and readable enough to earn space on your "classic studies of human behavior" bookshelf.

I second that WOW!

This is an amazing book, a real page turner. I lived in Louisiana for eight years, and the book really captures a lot of the history, the culture and the realities that led up to the tragedy that befell my beloved former home on my birthday last year. The narrative is riveting without insulting the intelligence of the reader. The tragedy of Katrina began many years earlier, and this book helps place events in context. Fully a third of the book recounts history prior to the first raindrops hitting Louisiana. The book steers a nice balance. It is deep enough to illuminate the political, economic and engineering factors that created the mess, but not so dry as to make it stuffy. It really presents a compelling case study in public policy and illustrates how important geography is to understanding our future. It is clear that the authors' familiarity with the subject going back several years helped with the background portion of the book. These guys really know this stuff. This should be a model for a popular account of a major event. I know that some people may be unhappy that the book skirts over material supporting the second half of the title ("Coming Age of Superstorms") and others may object to any discussion of that topic, but I think that the authors do a good job placing their argument within the framework of mainstream thinking about climate change. My only complaint is that I wish that there were more maps.

Wow!

I was amazed at how much information was included in this book -- broad historical perspective, day-by-day, hour-by-hour accounts of the days immediately following the storm -- both what was happening in New Orleans and what was happening in Washington, plus scientific background on how hurricanes form. I highly recommend it!