Katrina's Secrets: Storms After The Storm

by C. Ray Nagin

Gaining a firm grasp on the highly complex, famously fraught aftermath of Hurricane Katrina can seem as tenuous as its victims’ shaky grasp on survival. One man, then Mayor C. Ray Nagin, was the metaphoric eye of the storm. Charged with assessing the forces that swirled around him, the city’s leader strove to maintain formidable calm in the face of the biggest natural and man-made disaster in America’s history. That is, until he simply could not. Now, Nagin’s account, Katrina’s Storms after the Storm, lays out the days leading up to and the intense thrity days following the storm. At once stirringly elegiac and disarmingly candid, this spellbinding reckoning delivers exacting detail, while boldly exposing secrets that, until now, have been glossed over or spun out. Each hour, Nagin navigated tumultuous political channels, all while survivors clung to rooftops and begged for drinking water. Nagin’s team confronted thousands of calls pleading for rescue; politicos more keen to pose for photos than to pose solutions; broken promises from FEMA; and the violent Superdome; and the controversial acts of some police. When he at last broke down in a radio interview, the world cried with him. Clear and compassionate, the author illuminates the unparalleled complexity of the city’s immediate and far-reaching response. He charts the magnitude of the efforts undertaken in response to the lives that hung in the balance and the actions taken to restore New Orleans to its rightful luster. Katrina’s Secrets also provides crucial context of race and class to shed new and unnerving light on how the events played out.Throughout the searing narrative, Nagin’s deep love of his native city shines through like a beacon in the treacherous, storm-tossed night. Any reader dumbfounded by the fallout of Katrina will cling to every graceful, gutsy page of this heartbreaking ode to a place like no other, and its breathtaking comeback. Katrina’s Secrets is certain to give ample pause for thought—and cause to act.

Genres: Nonfiction

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2011

Reviews

[Roosevelt Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

A frank and revealing look into the way the government failed the City of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. While obviously well researched, it reads like an action drama. Good read.

[Arburtha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative read! Opened my eyes to be sure! I thought the job was difficult but to have so much against him, especially the one's who were suppose to be there to assist in the disaster! BOO!!! BOO to them!!

[chaz2b]

- 062211 Ray Nagin describes post-Hurricane Katrina paranoia in his new book http://bit.ly/iMa1OW
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[Tamika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank God for Mr. Nagin

Makes you remember where you were when Katrina struck. Brings back the feelings of helplessness you felt after seeing the pictures and interviews. Thank you Mr Nagin, for saving and exposing. Ready for book 2.

[Martin J. Audiffred · Rating 4 out of 5]

it too too long for individuals to understand

The book is very good in showing why it takes so long for individuals to understand and make a decision

[Don Insixty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Find the entire review here:

http://doneinsixtysecondsblog.wordpre...

You know it’s bad when a public figure has to self-publish a book. You can just see it on Nagin’s stupid mug though. I never trusted him. I remember when Katrina went down and his face was everywhere. He just looked dumb. He still looks dumb.

This is a very long Amazon Preview, you’ll have to excuse me. Hey, it’s very long, much like the relief effort and government response and the time it took to get some fucking functioning trailers to these now destitute people who no doubt had to dodge Zulu coconuts and Wonder Woman’s invisible plane. This fuckin’ guy, here. It’s easy to blame Ragin Nagin, I guess. And that’s what I’ll do, since this blog is about him.

Things from Nagin’s chopper looked like spilled black coffee or like frosted flakes. He could see the stress on people’s faces. From a helicopter. In the wind. Okay then. NEXT.

Next he bashes Michael Brown, head of FEMA, for a few paragraphs, calling into play his inexperience and ineffectiveness in dealing with the storm. That’s a case of the black guy calling the kettle black, Mr. Nagin. NEXT.

Next, what doesn’t kill him makes him stronger and he should be Hercules after the morning he’s had. Aw, poor baby. Try spending a month locked up in a detention facility with no paperwork and no real charges and no real food and no contact with the outside world because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time or because you went out to your car to get some food you’d left and you got nabbed for “looting”, you fuck. NEXT.

No more NEXTs.

This is an incredibly self-absorbed and narcissistic take on the Katrina tragedy, written by a man who still can’t see outside of his barely throbbing and rarely functioning frontal lobe. It’s his version of OJ Simpson’s “I didn’t do it but if I did, this is how I’d do it” book. He fucked up just as much as the next guy but you wouldn’t guess it here.