Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and Natural, Racial and Economic Disasters

Michael Eric Dyson has made a career of placing racism and contemporary American culture in a context that makes sense—even to well-meaning white people who want to believe that the bad old days of white supremacy are far behind us. With his 12th book, Dyson gathers and synthesizes all the available information about Hurricane Katrina; the history and culture of the Gulf Coast; and our government’s missteps, mismanagement and failures. He makes clear how and why the disaster fell so disproportionately on folks on the wrong side of both the color and the poverty lines. The information is familiar, but Dyson’s analysis brings it all together, with absolute knockout footnotes. Comprehensive in spite of its quick publication, the book will leave readers as angry as they ought to be.