Related Links Ann Holder: Katrina: The Neglected Challenge to Racial Citizenship in Cosmopolitan New Orleans (video) Lynell Thomas: Katrina: Constructions of Blackness in Tourist New Orleans (video) Miriam Greenberg: Katrina: The Question of Urban Exceptionalism (video) Amy Lesen: Katrina: Scientists Versus the Local Community (video) AHA panel on Katrina (2007) Index Blogs Helping Historians Find Support and Each Other HNN Poll HNN Articles Roundup: Excerpts News Interesting Facts Quotes Blogs Helping Historians Find Support and Each Other HNN Katrina Blog for History Students and Faculty Message Board sponsored by the OAH, American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association HNN Poll What Does Katrina Tell Us About American Society? HNN Articles The Reckless Abandonment of New Orleans By Douglas Brinkley Katrina Dreams and Fears By Guenter Bischof Mired in New Orleans: One Year After Katrina By Craig E. Colten Lessons from the Past: Postwar German and European Reconstruction and the Rebuilding of Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Gulf Coast By Gnter Bischof What Needs to Be Done in New Orleans Now By Gnter Bischof The Executive Branch?s Response to the Flood of 1927 By Kevin Kosar Impressions Upon Returning to New Orleans By Gnter Bischof What We Need Is a Marshall Plan in Reverse By Gnter Bischof Was Katrina the Biggest, the Worst Natural Disaster in U.S. History? By Normand Forgues-Roy When Hemingway Took the Government to Task for a Hurricane Disaster that Cost Hundreds of Lives By Melissah J. Pawlikowski My New Orleans By Darla Rushing Why It's Time for Dr. New Deal (Again) By Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs Mission Not Accomplished (Illustration) By Joshua Brown What Katrina Tells Us About Mr. Bush's Philosophy of Government By Leonard Steinhorn Interview with Erik Larson: The Hurricane that Destroyed Galveston in 1900 By Rick Shenkman Houston Universities Welcome History Students Displaced by Katrina By Karen Kossie-Chernyshev Missing Historians: The Ordeal of Not Knowing By Rick Shenkman Historians Should Help Design the Reconstruction of the Affected Communities By Gerda Lerner The Power of Outrage By Eric Foner What Hurricanes Tell Us About Ourselves By Louis A. Prez, Jr. Was the 1927 Flood the "Good Flood"? By Rob MacDougall The Florida Flood that Accounted for the Most Deaths of Black People in a Single Day (Until Katrina) By Eliot Kleinberg A Week Later: A Report from the Frontlines of Katrina By Paul W. Hoffman Interview with Pete Daniel: The Great Flood of 1927 By Rick Shenkman Baghdad or New Orleans (Illustration) By Joshua Brown Katrina One History Professor's Experience with the Katrina Relief Effort By Karen Kossie-Chernyshev In New Orleans, Once Again, the Irony of Southern History By Christopher Morris Tulane: Caught in the Middle of a Disaster By Bonnie Goodman Interview with Willie Drye: Katrina and the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 By Rick Shenkman The View from Air Force One (Illustration) By Joshua Brown How FDR Handled the Fallout from the Great Labor Day Hurricaine of 1935 By Willie Drye We Expect the Government to Save Us from Storms ... We Didn't Always By Raymond Arsenault Why Katrina Is Likely to Be a Disaster for President Bush, too By Ted Widmer Roundup: Excerpts What Katrina Teaches about the Meaning of Racism By Nils Gilman How Presidents and citizens react to disaster By David Remnick Katrina ... The Politics of Incompetence and Decline By Immanuel Wallerstein The Ghost City of New Orleans--And Why It Matters By George Friedman Post-Civil War Deals with the Feds Ensured a New Orleans Society Dominated by Whites By Christopher Morris Katrina ... Greatest Natural Disaster in Our History? By Donald Luskin Policy Storms of the Century By Daniel Glover What Katrina Tells Us About Ourselves By Martin E. Marty A Natural Disaster, a Man-Made Catastrophe, and a Human Tragedy By Ted Steinberg Too Bad We Didn't Follow the Example Set by San Francisco After the Earthquake of 1907 By Simon Winchester The Shame of a Nation By Ron Briley What the Dutch Did to Save Themselves After the Flood of 1953 Simon Rozendaal Seeking Justice, of Gods or the Politicians By Edward Rothstein Katrina Windbags By Max Boot After Katrina, a Government Adrift By Godfrey Hodgson Sucker's Bets for the New Century By Bill McKibben FEMA's Transformation Under Bill Clinton By Stephen Barr The Perfect Storm and the Feral City By Tom Engelhardt Looking for a Scapegoat for Katrina By Niall Ferguson The 1927 Flood -- The Worst in History (Until Now) By John M. Barry New Orleans ... The Center of Black Culture in America By Anne Rice Katrina Blew In, and Tossed Up Reminders of a Tattered Racial Legacy By Lynne Duke and Teresa Wiltz Department of Homeland Screw-Up By Timothy Naftali Out of Our Crises Should Emerge a New Commitment to Democracy By Mary L. Dudziak Will New Orleans Revive? By Joel Kotkin The Storm After the Storm By David Brooks News Websites Hurricane Digital Memory Bank Historians Helping Historians: The Hurricane Katrina Message Board Civil War Damage Assessment Discussion Forum: Civil War Damage Assessment American Association of Museums (Scroll down for news stories) How Katrina Has Affected Libraries News Stories Hurricane Archive Collects over 5000 Online Stories and Images D-Day Museum Official Recounts His Horror When Looters Invaded the Museum Trying to Resurrect the Body of a City Buried in Sludge and History Historic trust rallies to preserve damaged New Orleans buildings A City's Legends Endure, Precariously Preserved in Wax New Orleans Historic Black 9th Ward: Can It Survive? Katrina: Latest Survey of Historic Sites At FEMA, Disasters and Politics Go Hand in Hand Pa. city battled floods 116 years ago Douglas Brinkley: Doing Book on Katrina The next great diaspora? Red Tape Getting in the Way of Saving Archives in Katrina's Path Douglas Brinkley to Do Oral Histories of Katrina Katrina: What Historians Are Doing Lives and history adrift on a soggy paper trail Katrina sweeps away Gulf Coast history Katrina's Aftermath; Lives And History Adrift What's Left of Jefferson Davis's Home? Not Much In Mississippi, history is now a salvage job Gerda Lerner Petition Deliberately Endangering/Destroying Archives: Part I Deliberately Endangering/Destroying Archives: Part II Katrina Is the Biggest Challenge to Public Schools Since the Civil War, Say Historians FEMA doesn't want news orgs taking pictures of the dead John Barry's Book on 1927 Flood Selling Fast Historians work to account for New Orleans jazz artifacts Katrina, like the Louisiana flood of 1927, returns the poor of inner city to forefront Colleges make a range of offers for displaced students seeking fall enrollment Cities have vanished before, under force of time and an inconstant earth Conceding Defeat ? for a Semester After Katrina Toll Is Also Exacted on Gulf Region's Historical and Cultural Treasures Deadly Similarities a Century Apart UN Says Katrina Worse than Tsunami in Property Damage French Quarter, Garden District appear largely intact Museums: Hurricane Katrina - First Reports Katrina's Growth Echoed 1935's "Storm of Century" Broad Survey of Damage to Historic Sites in the Gulf States National Park Service Team Set to Rescue Years of Artifacts The Ten Worst Natural Disasters Storm Cleanup May Be Biggest In U.S. History Interesting Facts Origin of the Word Hurricane"The word hurricane derives from the Native American word huracn. Native American groups throughout the Caribbean basin recognized huracn (spelled in a variety of ways) as a powerful god or supernatural force under the control of a god. The Taino Indians of the Greater Antilles held that huracn was responsible for the formation of the islands themselves. In Mayan culture, hurakn was one of the three most powerful forces in the pantheon of deities, along with cabrakn (earthquake) and chirakn (volcano)." FEMA was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 after criticism of the government's fragmented response to a series of disasters, including Hurricane Camille in 1969 and California earthquakes in 1971. Bill Clinton upgraded FEMA to cabinet-level status. It is now part of Homeland Security. During the 20th century, floods were the number-one natural disaster in the United States in terms of number of lives lost and property damage. The most devastating flood in U.S. history occurred in the summer of 1993. The Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, was above flood stage for 144 days between April 1 and September 30, 1993. Seventeen thousand square miles of land were covered by floodwaters in a region covering all or parts of nine states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois). Quotes Alexander Cockburn: Weather can wipe out cities forever. It's what happened to America's first city, after all, as a visit to Chaco Canyon northeast of Gallup, New Mexico, attests. At the start of the thirteenth century it got hotter in that part of the world, and by the 1230s the Anasazi up and moved on. As the world now knows, weather need not have done New Orleans in. Stuart Schwartz, historian: The writing of the history of hurricanes like that of much environmental history begins with a problem. For all their power and destructive potential, the history of the hurricanes is, because of their frequency, almost inherently boring. Sidney Blumenthal:Before Katrina, the Republican theory received its most apposite formulation by a prominent lobbyist and close advisor to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, who said about government that he wanted to "drown it in the bathtub." In relation to the waters that surround it, New Orleans has been described as a bathtub, and it has served as the bathtub for Norquist's wish. Barbara Bush: What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. So this is working very well for them. News story (Slate summary of the news): The papers say that Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist put off a vote on extending the estate-tax cut. But the WP mentions far down that Republicans suggested they'll "proceed with a package of $70 billion in tax cuts." The Post also says that for the moment House Republicans are still sticking by their proposal to cut funding for Louisiana flood control. "We are committed to living within our budget," said the Appropriations Committee spokesman. Scott Cowen, president of Tulane: We've never had an incident that I know of in the history of the United States when an entire city was closed down and people were uncertain when it would reopen. There is no script for this. There is no road map for this. We're writing it as we go along. Tom Engelhardt: The headline was: "Direct hit in New Orleans could mean a modern Atlantis," and the first paragraph of the story read: "More than 1.2 million people in metropolitan New Orleans were warned to get out Tuesday as [the] 140-mph hurricane churned toward the Gulf Coast, threatening to submerge this below-sea-level city in what could be the most disastrous storm to hit in nearly 40 years." That was USA Today and the only catch was -- the piece had been written on September 14, 2004 as Hurricane Ivan seemed to be barreling toward New Orleans. David Brooks: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche. Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib. Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices. Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. ... Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence.