Date: November 5, 2005

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry

The theme was "U.S. Western Literature." Other nominees for this meeting were:

• City of Quartz by Mike Davis
• Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson
• Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America by Theodore Steinberg

• The management of the Mississippi is one example where decades go by with eveyrone implementing stupid policies, even though better information was available. What can you think of today that will look stupid decades from now?
• So how come I never learned about this flood in any of the 6 iterations of U.S. history I went through in K-12 schools?
• Whether he deserved to or not, Hooever emerged from this disaster as a hero. Giuliani emerged from 9/11 as a hero. Could anyone have emerged from Katina as a great hero figure?
• Do you believe that the Percy family was really so important? Or were they just used as an example of their class for narrative purposes?
• The end of the book suggests that controlling the Mississippi is futile? What do you think?
• The intentional breaching of the leve in New Orleans - Discuss.
• Was the 1927 flood cause by politics or nature?