Tom Piazza

Rushed into print three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans on August 29, 2005, Why New Orleans Matters purported to explain to Americans unfamiliar with the city what was unique about it and why it merited rebuilding. As a New Orleanian, I agreed wholeheartedly that the city was unique and must be rebuilt, but I thought then--and, almost 15 years later, still believe--that Tom Piazza lacked depth in his understanding of the Crescent City and did a dismal job of explaining its importance. For a real picture of New Orleans after the storm, read Chris Rose's 1 Dead in Attic (either edition).… (mehr)

"But what fiction does that no other genre can do is provide a kind of coordination, or mediation, between characters' most internal experience and their lives as members of a community" - Tom Piazza

A book about something as intensely devastating as Hurricane Katrina seems like it could only be written by Tom Piazza: A New Orleans resident who had already been writing about New Orleans before the catastrophe. Someone who is accustomed to writing non-fiction, who has that focus to write about what happened while also fully fleshing these characters into real people. Hurricane Katrina was that horrendous combination of natural disaster plus man-made mistakes, yet Piazza does a fantastic job focusing on the characters. The sheer amount of the people that were displaced from their homes is surprising to me all these years later. All of us watched the news while Katrina was happening, but less so after... when so many were living in Houston, Chicago, so many places far from home.... The cameras couldn't follow ALL of these displaced families. Piazza does a great job of covering before, during, after: following one black family, one white. One family who flees New Orleans, one family that stays. Essential New Orleans reading. A worthy second placer in The Morning News Tournament of Books: https://themorningnews.org/tob/2009/… (mehr)