by C. Ray Nagin ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 22, 2011
An affecting firsthand account of a mayor trying to pull his city back from the brink.
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Former New Orleans mayor Nagin presents his side of the Hurricane Katrina story.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as New Orleans struggled to rebuild itself nearly from scratch, there was a fair amount of finger-pointing in the press and among the public figures involved. Clearly someone had failed the city, 80% of which was covered in floodwater thanks to broken levees, and its most vulnerable residents, thousands of whom were forced to live in filthy, dangerous conditions in the Superdome stadium and the city’s convention center. The federal government was in charge of maintaining the now-useless levees. The Federal Emergency Management Agency didn’t realize the gravity of the situation at the time and failed to deliver much-needed supplies. The state government held back desperately needed National Guard troops. And, of course, there was the local government. Nagin, who was mayor when the storm hit, presents the argument that, since this disaster was so unprecedented in scope, there was no way the city could have adequately prepared. According to Nagin, given its limited resources and the extent of the damage, the city never had a chance to get ahead of the disaster, especially since help wasn’t exactly forthcoming from the outside, either. Nagin, whose prose is competent if not lyrical, describes a detached FEMA—which bought into early press reports that downplayed the disaster—a federal government too focused on saving face to provide any real help and a state government so interested in looking “tough” that it refused to let the Feds take charge of the recovery. Nagin provides key insight into several turning points in the unfolding disaster, including his famous, somewhat profane cry for help to a call-in radio show, which made those outside New Orleans realize the extent of the disaster for the first time. While any memoir written by a politician should be taken with copious amounts of salt, the author presents a strong case for himself and his staff, describing how they worked against impossible odds to save the city and fought petty politics that deprived them of much-needed outside assistance.
An affecting firsthand account of a mayor trying to pull his city back from the brink.Pub Date: June 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460959718
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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