Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Left to Chance : Hurricane Katrina and the Story of Two New Orleans Neighborhoods, Paperback / softback Book

Left to Chance : Hurricane Katrina and the Story of Two New Orleans Neighborhoods Paperback / softback

Part of the The Katrina Bookshelf series

Paperback / softback

Description

How do survivors recover from the worst urban flood in American history, a disaster that destroyed nearly the entire physical landscape of a city, as well as the mental and emotional maps that people use to navigate their everyday lives?

This question has haunted the survivors of Hurricane Katrina and informed the response to the subsequent flooding of New Orleans across many years. Left to Chance takes us into two African American neighborhoods—working-class Hollygrove and middle-class Pontchartrain Park—to learn how their residents have experienced “Miss Katrina” and the long road back to normal life.

The authors spent several years gathering firsthand accounts of the flooding, the rushed evacuations that turned into weeks- and months-long exile, and the often confusing and exhausting process of rebuilding damaged homes in a city whose local government had all but failed.

As the residents’ stories make vividly clear, government and social science concepts such as “disaster management,” “restoring normality,” and “recovery” have little meaning for people whose worlds were washed away in the flood.

For the neighbors in Hollygrove and Pontchartrain Park, life in the aftermath of Katrina has been a passage from all that was familiar and routine to an ominous world filled with raw existential uncertainty.

Recovery and rebuilding become processes imbued with mysteries, accidental encounters, and hasty adaptations, while victories and defeats are left to chance.

Information

Other Formats

Save 6%

£21.99

£20.59

 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information

Also in the The Katrina Bookshelf series  |  View all