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Katrina: A History, 1915-2015
The definitive history of Katrina: an epic of citymaking, revealing how engineers and oil executives, politicians and musicians, and neighbors black and white built New Orleans, then watched it sink under the weight of their competing ambitions.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster extend across the twentieth century. After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Sewerage and Water Board believed that developers could safely build housing away from the high ground near the Mississippi. And so New Orleans grew in lowlands that relied on significant government subsidies to stay dry. When the flawed levee system surrounding the city and its suburbs failed, these were the neighborhoods that were devastated. The homes that flooded belonged to Louisianans black and white, rich and poor. Katrina's flood washed over the twentieth-century city.
The flood line tells one important story about Katrina, but it is not the only story that matters. Andy Horowitz investigates the response to the flood, when policymakers reapportioned the challenges the water posed, making it easier for white New Orleanians to return home than it was for African Americans. And he explores how the profits and liabilities created by Louisiana's oil industry have been distributed unevenly among the state's citizens for a century, prompting both dreams of abundance--and a catastrophic land loss crisis that continues today.
Laying bare the relationship between structural inequality and physical infrastructure--a relationship that has shaped all American cities--Katrina offers a chilling glimpse of the future disasters we are already creating.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster extend across the twentieth century. After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Sewerage and Water Board believed that developers could safely build housing away from the high ground near the Mississippi. And so New Orleans grew in lowlands that relied on significant government subsidies to stay dry. When the flawed levee system surrounding the city and its suburbs failed, these were the neighborhoods that were devastated. The homes that flooded belonged to Louisianans black and white, rich and poor. Katrina's flood washed over the twentieth-century city.
The flood line tells one important story about Katrina, but it is not the only story that matters. Andy Horowitz investigates the response to the flood, when policymakers reapportioned the challenges the water posed, making it easier for white New Orleanians to return home than it was for African Americans. And he explores how the profits and liabilities created by Louisiana's oil industry have been distributed unevenly among the state's citizens for a century, prompting both dreams of abundance--and a catastrophic land loss crisis that continues today.
Laying bare the relationship between structural inequality and physical infrastructure--a relationship that has shaped all American cities--Katrina offers a chilling glimpse of the future disasters we are already creating.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published June 16, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 26, 2020
A Review/ interview from my first ever piece in The Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-tra...
Until then, ponder this:
"Back during the summer of 2007, Donald Powell, the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, whom President Bush had appointed to coordinate federal recovery efforts, had talked with a reporter about the then-nascent plan for the region's new hurricane protections. 'In my view, you should be able to trust the United States,' Powell said. 'People thought they were protected, and the levees breached. We need to bridge that trust gap. That's what these levees are about.' He told the reporter that the two questions Louisianans asked him most often were, 'When are we going to get Category 5 protection?' and 'If another Katrina hits, are we safe?' A decade later, the questions could be answered: never, and no.
The next time New Orleans floods, many are likely to observe the situation with an abundance of pity and a measure of scorn. Looking backward, they will call the city's fate inevitable. Some might think it deserved, even welcome. 'Those poor people,' they will say, 'deciding to live where they ought not. They will be better off elsewhere.'
May Katrina's history classes chasten such critics. What came to be known as New Orleans's 'recovery' involved a decision not to even aspire for a hurricane protection system that could truly protect the city. That joined a decision to evict people from their homes in the face of a homelessness crisis, a decision to close the hospital in the midst of an epidemic of suicide, and a decision to help children by firing their parents. It extended decades of decisions that had encouraged citizens to depend on promises that their government often proved unwilling, or unable, to keep, and decades of decisions that had apportioned the state's wealth and its liabilities in perversely unequal measure. These actions made Louisiana into a place very different from the one many other New Orleanians wanted, and might have created, had they the means to do so.
The people with the most power to decide such things are rarely the ones most affected by the decisions. In the end, it seems to me that the pain our collective actions impose upon some people, followed often by the blinding insistence that their suffering was somehow fair, or natural, or inevitable, is not the cause or consequence of some external disaster. It is the disaster itself."
February 3, 2021
excellent overview of history/policy/connections in New Orleans that framed Katrina. cried during the epilogue.
October 24, 2021
This book is less about hurricane Katrina and more about the environmental and political history before Katrina that led to such a horrific situation after the storm; as well as the mess of repayment and rebuilding for New Orleans and its citizens. Prior to the catastrophic hurricane in 2015, New Orleans weathered two other major hurricanes in its history, the hurricane of 1915 (prior to named hurricanes) and hurricane Betsy in 1965. Both left devastating damage in the Crescent City and over time the coastal line began to rise and St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes began to sink. Nefarious politicians and flawed organizations failed to secure the canals and levee systems that were supposed to be designed to protect the city and its inhabitants from future storms. Those levees exploded in the aftermath of Katrina leaving portions of New Orleans completely submerged, homes devasted, with thousands stranded, injured, and dead. If the levee system had been properly secured to withstand a cat 5 hurricane, the damage would have been far less devastating.
After Katrina, the government, insurance agencies, and many other organizations failed to adequately respond with help and recovery in a timely fashion, leaving many New Orleanians homeless and forcing others to relocate. Neighborhoods and public housing were destroyed or razed and never rebuilt, some never re-emerged from the changing coastal line. It was years after the storm before some citizens received any form of financial help and the paltry amount didn't come close to allowing them to rebuild.
One overall theme of the book is the disparity in the race and economic position of New Orleanians in regards to the help and benefits they received in the storm's aftermath. Upper-class white homeowners were better protected prior to the storm. They were also the ones who were better able to request and receive grants, loans, and payments to help rebuild. The hardest hit were those in public housing, regardless of race, and middle-class African Americans living in the Ninth Ward. Many of them had to evacuate and relocate to other states, never to return.
The author also captures the essence of New Orleans and the resiliency of its people. Anyone who has visited NOLA understands the appeal of the area and the heart of its people. That spirit comes through in the book and the despair they felt at their loss.
Author Andy Horowitz thoroughly researched this book, interviewing residents, politicians, organizational staff, as well as combing through countless newspapers, public reports, and archives. He seems to cover every aspect of what went wrong before and after Katrina and how the Crescent City has changed over the last century, not just in demographics, but in shape, size, and environmental makeup. Unfortunately, New Orleans may be no more ready for a major hurricane than it was prior to the previous devasting storms.
After Katrina, the government, insurance agencies, and many other organizations failed to adequately respond with help and recovery in a timely fashion, leaving many New Orleanians homeless and forcing others to relocate. Neighborhoods and public housing were destroyed or razed and never rebuilt, some never re-emerged from the changing coastal line. It was years after the storm before some citizens received any form of financial help and the paltry amount didn't come close to allowing them to rebuild.
One overall theme of the book is the disparity in the race and economic position of New Orleanians in regards to the help and benefits they received in the storm's aftermath. Upper-class white homeowners were better protected prior to the storm. They were also the ones who were better able to request and receive grants, loans, and payments to help rebuild. The hardest hit were those in public housing, regardless of race, and middle-class African Americans living in the Ninth Ward. Many of them had to evacuate and relocate to other states, never to return.
The author also captures the essence of New Orleans and the resiliency of its people. Anyone who has visited NOLA understands the appeal of the area and the heart of its people. That spirit comes through in the book and the despair they felt at their loss.
Author Andy Horowitz thoroughly researched this book, interviewing residents, politicians, organizational staff, as well as combing through countless newspapers, public reports, and archives. He seems to cover every aspect of what went wrong before and after Katrina and how the Crescent City has changed over the last century, not just in demographics, but in shape, size, and environmental makeup. Unfortunately, New Orleans may be no more ready for a major hurricane than it was prior to the previous devasting storms.
October 14, 2025
I thought the first part of the book, tracing how various policy and physical development decisions dramatically increased New Orleans' vulnerability to catastrophic flooding, was particularly effective. I had some issues with a couple of sections of part 2, which concerns what followed for the city following landfall and through 2015. I am not entirely objective on that subject - I worked on disaster recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (and later Ike and Gustav) for a number of years, so my reaction is influenced by my personal experiences and perceptions of what was happening on the ground at the time. But I do think that in a couple of instances (such as the controversy over whether to demolish the big 4 New Orleans' public housing developments) the discussion in the book does not fully capture some other significant concerns that were simultaneously in play. I don't mean suggest the author wasn't being forthright - just that in my opinion a couple of the topics covered in the rebuilding chapter were more complex and layered than what they seemed (both at the time and now with the benefit of hindsight) at least to me. This personal quibble aside, a compelling and worthwhile read.
December 8, 2022
A chilling account of the effects of American exceptionalism, white supremacy, pseudo-Christian moral justice, and, of course, consistent capitulation to capital. I cannot compete with Horowitz's own words, so here are some of the most thought-provoking, damning quotes:
Disasters, so-called, are not so diferent from other moments in time. There often is more to be gained by bringing them down to the chronos of history than leaving them in the kairos of the sublime.
The notion that clouds have silver linings—that catastrophes of death and loss may be redeemed by the changes they set in course—was, for many Americans, an article of faith. This faith resonated with a Christian theology of sacrifice, but in its modern American incarnation, it represented, most of all, a capitalist belief that progress comes through a process of “creative destruction.”
“I thought I could weather the storm, and I did,” one woman told a reporter. “It’s the aftermath that’s killing me.”
The people with the most power to decide such things are rarely the ones most affected by the decisions. In the end, it seems to me that the pain our collective actions impose upon some people, followed often by the blinding insistence that their suffering was somehow fair, or natural, or inevitable, is not the cause or consequence of some external disaster. It is the disaster itself.
“Tell me again what you think you are asking me to sacrifice,” Edwards said, “and why you think it is mine to give.”
Disasters, so-called, are not so diferent from other moments in time. There often is more to be gained by bringing them down to the chronos of history than leaving them in the kairos of the sublime.
The notion that clouds have silver linings—that catastrophes of death and loss may be redeemed by the changes they set in course—was, for many Americans, an article of faith. This faith resonated with a Christian theology of sacrifice, but in its modern American incarnation, it represented, most of all, a capitalist belief that progress comes through a process of “creative destruction.”
“I thought I could weather the storm, and I did,” one woman told a reporter. “It’s the aftermath that’s killing me.”
The people with the most power to decide such things are rarely the ones most affected by the decisions. In the end, it seems to me that the pain our collective actions impose upon some people, followed often by the blinding insistence that their suffering was somehow fair, or natural, or inevitable, is not the cause or consequence of some external disaster. It is the disaster itself.
“Tell me again what you think you are asking me to sacrifice,” Edwards said, “and why you think it is mine to give.”
January 2, 2021
A thought provoking journey into how Katrina was less a disaster in and of itself, but rather one that had been years in the making. Parts of this will make you question the prism you view disasters and inequality and racism through. Other parts will just discourage you. But all of it is vital to understand if you want to truly understand what Katrina was and what it just highlighted. A worthy read.
August 24, 2025
The author is a professor whose classes I really enjoyed in college. Good look at the environmental and political conditions before and after hurricane katrina and very rich in storytelling about the people and culture of New Orleans.
I don’t really spend much time thinking about my time in college during the day to day (because it wasn’t the happiest period of my life) but sometimes I wonder if cutting that period out also cuts out the experience of living in such a fascinating place and coming of age taking classes thinking about rebuilding and resilience and privilege and culture. Not the point of this book obviously, but reading it just made me think a lot about my time in New Orleans and how it shaped who I am today
I don’t really spend much time thinking about my time in college during the day to day (because it wasn’t the happiest period of my life) but sometimes I wonder if cutting that period out also cuts out the experience of living in such a fascinating place and coming of age taking classes thinking about rebuilding and resilience and privilege and culture. Not the point of this book obviously, but reading it just made me think a lot about my time in New Orleans and how it shaped who I am today
April 15, 2025
4 stars. extremely devastating to see how the city of new orleans was repeatedly let down and taken advantage of by people who said they wanted to help. kind of expected that the katrina section would be a little bit more compared to the rest of it but it felt like we just breezed past it kind of quickly. i had never considered the societal fallout post katrina and it just made me sad
February 15, 2021
first instinct after reading this: telling my sis to gtfo of New Orleans
November 22, 2020
4.5. This took me a while to get through, but it was oh-so-worth-it. The author is a professor who is meticulous about his research (a third of this book is notes). I'm definitely most interested in learning about the day Katrina hit and what happened afterward, but I think the first part of the book - which explains how actions and policies from the 1910s affected New Orleans in 2005 - was very important. It's a mix of things: environmental disdain policy coming to fruition, government agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers not even following through with their own recommendations re: levees, policies that mean industry/the economy take the lead over people. And it's not just about what happened before Katrina; Horowitz argues that possibly what's most destructive is that post-Katrina, the policies the local, state, and federal government came up with to deal with this "natural" disaster were the actual disaster. Most troubling was the response to public housing, the public school system, and the city's public hospital. The financial assistance offered to victims was not sufficient and oftentimes times it was incredibly tardy. In some cases the government awarded victims their due for lost or damaged homes and then decided to plow their homes anyway to build something else. The most maddening aspect of this book happens immediately after the hurricane lands: the stereotypical depictions of hurricane survivors, particularly of Black survivors, were ludicrous. The idea of gangs and looters running rampant, the racist dog whistle comments from public officials, the number of people police shot and/or killed... and the complete lack of evidence for this response or these comments left me stunned. I had never heard of Henry Glover or what happened on Danziger Bridge until I read this book.
March 22, 2021
This book is SO GOOD. A dense and razor sharp account of the history leading up to Hurricane Katrina and the state’s failure to provide adequate recovery afterwards. Behind every “disaster” is a series of very purposeful decisions.
January 21, 2021
A masterful and engaging reframing of not just Katrina, but Louisiana history. I could have read another 500 pages. Must read.
January 29, 2021
A book for which its importance cannot be overstated, a book that makes you want to buy a megaphone to proclaim its contents to the public. READ THIS EVERYONE!!!!!
November 21, 2024
next time you say “oh the government wouldn’t do that” yes the fuck they would
August 6, 2023
Really eye-opening in how impactful government policy and racism can be when it comes to natural disasters in America.
August 29, 2024
Katrina: A History has thus far been my favorite academic work on Hurricane Katrina. Horowitz provides a detailed account of the events that led to Hurricane Katrina becoming the biggest failure in infrastructure that the United States has ever seen. I am not one to re-read nonfiction, but I find myself drawn to this book over and over again. I recommend this work to everybody, from academics to laymen, to even a goat who has somehow gained the ability to read.
August 13, 2020
Excellent, fast, history read. Well done tying states rights, capitalism, racism, and climate change all in as precursors to the devastation of Katrina.
August 3, 2022
A history of the calamity of Hurricane Katrina, and the city of New Orleans itself of the span of a century, yes, but more than this, Horowitz's book is a work of political theory that uses history to demonstrate how disastrous the hollowing out of the state under neoliberalism has been for life in the United States. Between the hurricane of 1915 and the decade long recovery from 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the history of New Orleans was shaped by brutal racism and systematic oppression of blacks orchestrated by the interests of capital and the politicians in charge. By the time Hurricane Betsy struck the city in 1965 the geography of racial oppression (importantly, not just the geography of housing but the geography of resource distribution) meant that the storm was a devastating warning shot about the destruction such a status quo would allow to be wreaked. Instead of preparing for the next storm in any meaningful way, the political infrastructure of the State of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans was deteriorated under the regime of neoliberalism that began in the 1970s and continues to this day. Horowitz's book is a haunting and infuriating demonstration of the importance of state power and capacity.
January 12, 2022
3-3.5
Emphasizes the unnatural nature of Katrina (and natural disasters in general) and how the 'disaster' exists often long before and long after the carnage. Many interesting statistics and interviews regarding inequality, disillusion with the government (local but esp. fed/state), contempt for capitalists (both in govt. positions and oil companies), inevitability vs. human contributions/apathy towards predictions/data, using tragedy for political/capitalist gains. Loved the direct quotes from people who had lived in NO before, during, and after and how everything surrounding Katrina led to differing experiences/interpretations depending on race/neighborhood/flooding/home-owners/income etc.
Ultimately I wish there would have been a stronger through-current of narrative for those directly affected. The author definitely gives them a voice, but if the book was longer then we could have heard much more.
Emphasizes the unnatural nature of Katrina (and natural disasters in general) and how the 'disaster' exists often long before and long after the carnage. Many interesting statistics and interviews regarding inequality, disillusion with the government (local but esp. fed/state), contempt for capitalists (both in govt. positions and oil companies), inevitability vs. human contributions/apathy towards predictions/data, using tragedy for political/capitalist gains. Loved the direct quotes from people who had lived in NO before, during, and after and how everything surrounding Katrina led to differing experiences/interpretations depending on race/neighborhood/flooding/home-owners/income etc.
Ultimately I wish there would have been a stronger through-current of narrative for those directly affected. The author definitely gives them a voice, but if the book was longer then we could have heard much more.
October 23, 2021
If I had known that the author has written for "The Atlantic" I doubt that I would have even attempted to read this. This work must be part of Tulane's CRT curriculum. The citations from the new york times certainly don't add to the credibility of this book.
A single storm no matter how notable is only a single piece of a larger mosaic.
Human foibles are as much to blame as broken infrastructure for the destruction of land, lives and livelihoods.
Katrina is put into context framed against the background of years of mismanagement greed and power abused.
The city official's actions appear highly negligent in the storm's aftermath for years and years beyond the date of the actual destruction.
I'm perhaps less ignorant for having read this, but I kept asking myself as I completed each chapter, "What about free will?".
A single storm no matter how notable is only a single piece of a larger mosaic.
Human foibles are as much to blame as broken infrastructure for the destruction of land, lives and livelihoods.
Katrina is put into context framed against the background of years of mismanagement greed and power abused.
The city official's actions appear highly negligent in the storm's aftermath for years and years beyond the date of the actual destruction.
I'm perhaps less ignorant for having read this, but I kept asking myself as I completed each chapter, "What about free will?".
April 6, 2021
One of the 2021 Bancroft Prize winners (awarded for the best books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas), this should be on the reading list for anyone interested in public policy. Horowitz argues that the disaster we call "Katrina" was NOT a discrete weather event which could not have been prevented but rather a long term event caused by a century of policy and public works decisions over the century before the 2005 hurricane and continuing to today. While many of these decisions are on their face despicable acts of racism and greed, many others are simply mistakes caused by well-meaning folks not always fully considering the effects of their decisions. The lessons of Katrina are those which all public policy officials can learn from.
August 17, 2022
“Rather than wipe the slate clean, the flood had deposited another layer of memories onto the stratigraphy that defined home”
“Viewed from a distance, Katrina’s causes seem so tangled that it is hard to imagine unraveling the knot—so it is important to remember that the threads could have been braided into a safety net rather than set as a snare, thrown as a lifeline instead of tied as a noose”
“A disaster is at best an interpretive fiction, or at worst, an ideological script…To name something a disaster is to decry its outcomes as illegitimate, and to call for a restoration of the status quo, instead of suggesting that the status quo may have been illegitimate in the first place”
Amazing book
“Viewed from a distance, Katrina’s causes seem so tangled that it is hard to imagine unraveling the knot—so it is important to remember that the threads could have been braided into a safety net rather than set as a snare, thrown as a lifeline instead of tied as a noose”
“A disaster is at best an interpretive fiction, or at worst, an ideological script…To name something a disaster is to decry its outcomes as illegitimate, and to call for a restoration of the status quo, instead of suggesting that the status quo may have been illegitimate in the first place”
Amazing book
August 30, 2022
5 stars - It took me forever to finish this book solely because life got in the way, but it is the best of what historical writing can do. I didn’t intend to finish this book 17 years to the day of Katrina’s landfall, but it feels poignant to finish this deeply tragic book nearly two decades later as an index of the utter and flagrant failures of government to learn from Katrina. This book is so smart in its meticulous construction of historical contingency as an antidote to the false concepts of natural disaster and inevitabilities. It pushes us to choose better for the future and embodies the ethical work of a historian in this world of climate catastrophe. Also, it helps that the writing is elegiac and tender, truly weaving this tragedy into still life.
September 24, 2023
Well first off this isn’t the book I was hoping for so mostly my two stars reflects that. Katrina is personal to me due to my time there doing animal rescue and this book only included a few pages on Katrina itself. The first half was a rather dry history of the levees, the development of NOLA, the segregation of neighborhoods etc. The after Katrina part was a bit more interesting in its description of how the racial disparity not only continued but was expanded in the programs and government plans during rebuilding. Painful to read about the bad decisions made (before and after) led to so much death and pain and personal loss. I was wishing there were more personal stories and eyewitness accounts but it read more like textbook. I’ll keep looking for the book I’m hoping for.
December 16, 2024
Andy Horowitz is a very good; thorough, and accessible nonfiction writer. I skimmed this book for my master's thesis on Louisiana climate policy (2022) but wanted to come back for a full, immersive read. I am so glad I did. So much of the reading I did in graduate school was interesting - I love the topics - but very inaccessible to wider audiences and tailored toward academia. Hard to read and get stuff out of. Katrina: A History is NOT like that!! Horowitz tells a story while giving a holistic and accessible history of NOLA water infrastructure that contextualizes Katrina perfectly. This is an essential read for anyone interested in urban planning Re: climate, climate adaptation and mitigation, gulf coast issues, Louisiana and its history, or any overlap of those. Highly recommend.
February 27, 2024
Objectively well done overall, and managed to be interesting at times in spite of the writing style just not being for me. The premise of highlighting the unreality of “natural” disasters through highlighting policy and systemic racism was great but got a bit more unfocused at the end, and the last chapter was hard for me to follow exactly how anything he said supported his thesis. I wish that the BP oil spill was more fleshed out as it could’ve further proved his point instead of being relegated to the epilogue.
April 26, 2025
Comprehensive exploration of what constitutes a “disaster” in America. The disaster we know as “Hurricane Katrina” was years in the making and a virtual inevitability as the product of poor land use decisions, greedy politicians and business interests, tribal attachments, and sheer stupidity, before and after the event. The sad thing is we learned nothing and it’s happening again – along the Jersey Shore, in Pacific Palisades, and wherever we try to impose our will on Nature, and ignore the effects of climate change.
November 12, 2025
I really enjoyed the way Horowitz contextualized Katrina, before, during, and after the storm, and reframed it as a "history," rather than a singular event. However, in the discussions of post-Katrina changes to the political economy, I think his attempt to sort of debunk the the concept of "disaster capitalism" as applied to those changes seemed unnecessary and possibly incorrect. To say that some change, whether to urban planning or public housing, is a result of political activity rather than "capitalism" is separating two things that are inseparable.
June 28, 2022
okay So I gave it 3 stars due to sharing historical facts
but honestly i received no pleasure in actually reading it. I felt like I was reading due to having a paper to complete for history class.
It provides historical facts about New Orleans and it's horrible levee system throughout the years. Basically that's it. If you are interested in a detailed history lesson about New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina then this is your book .
but honestly i received no pleasure in actually reading it. I felt like I was reading due to having a paper to complete for history class.
It provides historical facts about New Orleans and it's horrible levee system throughout the years. Basically that's it. If you are interested in a detailed history lesson about New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina then this is your book .
June 17, 2025
Unlike most of the books I've read on Katrina, this has less to do with what happened when the storm hit and the immediate aftermath, but how politics played in the situation to make New Orleans susceptible to hurricanes. I really appreciate this different look at it - how Betsy affected the way people viewed Katrina, the long-term rebuilding effort - answering the "why" and not just the "how" and "what."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews