New Orleans Book Display

It is hard to walk away from the powerful exhibit of photographs taken in New Orleans by the participants in this year's Alternative Spring Break and not have some questions about Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath. We've brought together a few books for a book display about New Orleans' past, the impact of Katrina and plans for the future. Here are a few I thought looked the most interesting:

Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability
by Henry Giroux
In his newest provocative book, prominent social critic Henry A. Giroux shows how the tragedy and suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina signals a much larger crisis in the United States. Questions regarding who is going to die and who is going to live are driving a new form of authoritarianism in the United States. Within this form of “dirty democracy” a new and more insidious set of forces – embedded in our global economy – have largely given up on the sanctity of human life, rendering some groups as disposable and privileging others. Giroux offers up a vision of hope that creates the conditions for multiple collective and global struggles that refuse to use politics as an act of war and markets as the measure of democracy.



New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus
by Samuel Charters
In December 1950, Samuel Charters first journeyed to New Orleans in search of its jazz sources and its musicians. In December 2005, he returned to his beloved city to find what still was left of this musical heritage after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.
In this highly personal portrait, Charters decribes staying with his son's family in their small, temporary apartment, as he explores the new music scene in the undamaged French Quarter and revisits old haunts like the celebrated Preservation Hall.
Amid the inevitable destruction and chaos, he found hope. Clarinet player Pete Fountain sums up the feelings of many fo the New Orleans musicians, old and new: 'I have two of my best clarinets. I can still toot.'



Federal Disaster Programs and Hurricane Katrina
Editor: Douglas D Syzerhans
Preface: Federal disaster programs kind of sit there and gather moss after all the expenses of running the government agencies responsible for rendering assistance to the disaster victims are spent on staff salaries, computers, travel and all the accompaniments of perceived power. Hopefully there will be no disasters. Otherwise, let them be small disasters which might not inturrupt lunch. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the federal disaster programs were themselves disasters which were limp responses to the thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and entire sectors of America destroyed. This new book tries to examine the initial disaster programs, recovery disaster programs designed to cover-up for the initial flaws and the programs planned to prevent more disastrous disaster programs.