CD: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 And How It Changed America

Plot

Product Description In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. Close to a million people -- in a nation of 120 million -- were forced out of their homes. Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands. The Red Cross fed nearly 700,000 refugees for months. Rising Tide is the story of this forgotten event, the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known. But it is not simply a tale of disaster. The flood transformed part of the nation and had a major cultural and political impact on the rest. Rising Tide is an American epic about science, race, honor, politics, and society. Rising Tide begins in the 19th century, when the first serious attempts to control the river began. From the engineers and the dominant families in the Delta to the New Orleans elite, Rising Tide tells how the flood changed the face of American and laid the groundwork for the New Deal. Review David Herbert Donald Author ofLincoln John M. Barry'sRising Tide is a highly original and absorbing book, which I found fascinating. His account of the great Mississsippi River flood of 1927 brilliantly recaptures the panic, the desperation, and the suffering of one of the greatest natural disasters in American history. --Review About the Author John M. Barry is the author ofThe Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington, and co-author ofThe Transformed Cell, which has been published in twelve languages. As Washington editor ofDunn's Review, he covered national politics, and he has also written forThe New York Times Magazine,Esquire,Newsweek,The Washington Post, andSports Illustrated. He lives in New Orleans and Washington, D.C. From AudioFile This very opinionated account of the devastating Mississippi River flood of 1927 and its causes is the sort of book that benefits from plates and footnotes. The former would help the reader understand the crucial engineering issues; the latter would help one assess the accuracy of the author's assertions and value judgements. We get neither in the audio version. Instead we have the voice of award-winning George Grizzard. His sharp, distinctive voice has gotten sandy with age. His mind, however, remains as sharp as ever. He performs not only with comprehension, but with a controlled sense of drama and not a little of the author's outrage at political shenanigans. So, although he can't do much for the book's credibility, he certainly makes it a good listen. Y.R. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine