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Original Essays | April 30, 2013
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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionsRising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed Americaby John M Barry
Staff Pick
"An account of the Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America. When the river flooded, it was possible to travel in a boat, east to west in the South, two hundred miles. The book is an account of how engineers had tried to control the Mississippi for the preceding hundred years and the conflicting theories about how to do that, the attempts and relative success prior to 1927, and how those attempts failed ultimately in '27. The subsequent flooding produced the worst national disaster in American history, resulting in an unknown number of deaths, assumed to be in the thousands. Barry explains how it affected the economic, social, and political environment of the Deep South, predominantly the Delta area. The novelist Walker Percy's family was a dominant force in the Delta at the time, and that's another storyline here — how that powerful family dealt with the flood and the rising power of the Ku Klux Klan. So the book, by talking about the flood, also deals with the politics of the region, immigration, race, its impact on the cotton industry, and ultimately how it made Herbert Hoover President and Huey Long Governor of Louisiana."
"An account of the Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America. When the river flooded, it was possible to travel in a boat, east to west in the South, two hundred miles. The book is an account of how engineers had tried to control the Mississippi for the preceding hundred years and the conflicting theories about how to do that, the attempts and relative success prior to 1927, and how those attempts failed ultimately in '27. The subsequent flooding produced the worst national disaster in American history, resulting in an unknown number of deaths, assumed to be in the thousands. Barry explains how it affected the economic, social, and political environment of the Deep South, predominantly the Delta area. The novelist Walker Percy's family was a dominant force in the Delta at the time, and that's another storyline here — how that powerful family dealt with the flood and the rising power of the Ku Klux Klan. So the book, by talking about the flood, also deals with the politics of the region, immigration, race, its impact on the cotton industry, and ultimately how it made Herbert Hoover President and Huey Long Governor of Louisiana." Synopses & ReviewsFrom Powells.com:In Rising Tide, John Barry chronicles the events that precipitated and resulted from the Mississippi flood of 1927, starting with the engineers and committees who battled greedily — and ultimately foolishly — to master North America's mightiest river. The flood represented the greatest natural disaster America had ever known; water claimed the lives of over 1,000 people and the homes of nearly one million, exposing racism, greed, power politics, and bureaucratic incompetence at every turn while simultaneously creating national heroes and lasting social change throughout the Deep South. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans were packed into squalid refugee camps and many more migrated north and west as the myths of friendly feudal plantation and sharecropping dissolved behind them. Southern plantation aristocracy was wiped out and a new elite was created. The Ku Klux Klan rose in power.
Barry's account of the 1927 flood provides a widely-acclaimed exploration of the reshaping of American culture, economy and politics. Powell's own Michael Powell calls Rising Tide his favorite among his Staff Picks. The book is also the winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the Lilian Smith Award, and has been named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Malia, Powells.com Publisher Comments:An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known — the Mississippi flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of nearly one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of blacks north, and transformed American society and politics forever.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award. Review:"A gripping account of the mammoth flooding of 1927 that devastated Mississippi and Louisiana and sent political shock waves to Washington...Rising Tide is a brilliant match of scholarship and investigative journalism." Jason Berry, Chicago Tribune
Review:"Barry clearly traces and analyzes how the changes produced by the flood in the lower South came into conflict and ultimately destroyed the old planter aristocracy...and foreshadowed federal government intervention in the region's social and economic life during the New Deal." Library Journal
Review:"[I]mplicates both the Mississippi River and the South in a deeper, darker side of the American experience....[The book reminds] us that Americans are just beginning to comprehend the power of their geography." John Opie, Mississippi Quarterly
About the AuthorJohn M. Barry is the author of The Great Influenza and The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington, and co-author of The Transformed Cell, which has been published in twelve languages. As Washington editor of Dunn's Review, he covered national politics, and he has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and Sports Illustrated. He lives in New Orleans and Washington, D.C.
Table of ContentsContents
Prologue 13 Part One: THE ENGINEERS 19 Chapter One 21 Chapter Two 32 Chapter Three 46 Chapter Four 55 Chapter Five 67 Chapter Six 78 Part Two: SENATOR PERCY 93 Chapter Seven 95 Chapter Eight 107 Chapter Nine 122 Chapter Ten 132 Chapter Eleven 143 Chapter Twelve 156 Part Three: THE RIVER 169 Chapter Thirteen 173 Chapter Fourteen 179 Chapter Fifteen 190 Chapter Sixteen 202 Part Four: THE CLUB 211 Chapter Seventeen 213 Chapter Eighteen 222 Chapter Nineteen 234 Chapter Twenty 245 Part Five: THE GREAT HUMANITARIAN 259 Chapter Twenty-One 261 Chapter Twenty-Two 272 Chapter Twenty-Three 282 Part Six: THE SON 291 Chapter Twenty-Four 293 Chapter Twenty-Five 303 Chapter Twenty-Six 318 Chapter Twenty-Seven 324 Part Seven: THE CLUB 337 Chapter Twenty-Eight 339 Chapter Twenty-Nine 344 Chapter Thirty 352 Part Eight: THE GREAT HUMANITARIAN 361 Chapter Thirty-One 363 Chapter Thirty-TwO 378 Chapter Thirty-Three 387 Part Nine: THE LEAVING OF THE WATERS 397 Chapter Thirty-Four 399 Chapter Thirty-Five 412 Appendix: The River Today 423 Notes 427 Bibliography 481 Acknowledgments and Methodology 497 Index 501
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