(no subject)
Book #5 -- Billy Sothern, Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned City, 316 pages.
Billy Sothern is a lawyer who works defending death row inmates, and this unique perspective comes through strongly in this book. Ostensibly, it is about the effect of Katrina on New Orleans, but in reality, Sothern uses Katrina as a launching pad to discuss the more long-term and insidious social ills of New Orleans. And he's right -- people often forget that many of the problems that got national attention after Katrina were not *caused* by the hurricane, merely exposed to the light of day. In practice, the prose is patchwork, jumping around frequently between personal narrative, Katrina stories, and impassioned tirades on New Orleans' underlying social disease. Nonetheless, there is some good information here, and Sothern should be praised for making clear what most other authors of Katrina books have glossed over -- that the hurricane, horrible as it was, was in reality just the straw that broke the camel's back: New Orleans before the hurricane was a house built of ragged cards, bound to collapse sooner or later.
Progress toward goals: 28/365 = 7.7%
Books: 5/100 = 5.0%
Pages: 1862/30000 = 6.2%
2009 Book List
cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven
Billy Sothern is a lawyer who works defending death row inmates, and this unique perspective comes through strongly in this book. Ostensibly, it is about the effect of Katrina on New Orleans, but in reality, Sothern uses Katrina as a launching pad to discuss the more long-term and insidious social ills of New Orleans. And he's right -- people often forget that many of the problems that got national attention after Katrina were not *caused* by the hurricane, merely exposed to the light of day. In practice, the prose is patchwork, jumping around frequently between personal narrative, Katrina stories, and impassioned tirades on New Orleans' underlying social disease. Nonetheless, there is some good information here, and Sothern should be praised for making clear what most other authors of Katrina books have glossed over -- that the hurricane, horrible as it was, was in reality just the straw that broke the camel's back: New Orleans before the hurricane was a house built of ragged cards, bound to collapse sooner or later.
Progress toward goals: 28/365 = 7.7%
Books: 5/100 = 5.0%
Pages: 1862/30000 = 6.2%
2009 Book List
cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven