More than a decade after Hurricane Katrina, revisit Tom Piazza's
award-winning appraisal of a city in crisis--with a new afterword
placing the story of New Orleans in the context of the ongoing threat to
America's coastal populations.
In the years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans,
Americans have learned much from the resilience of this proud, battered
city. And yet, even as the city has regained some of its lost footing,
other regions around the country continue to be battered by hurricanes,
snow and ice storms, and massive weather events like Superstorm Sandy,
which devastated the mid-Atlantic coast seven years later.
Published just months after the storm, Why New Orleans Matters was
immediately hailed as a passionate and eloquent celebration of the city
as both a cultural center and a home to millions of residents from
varied--and sometimes precarious--walks of life. Award-winning author
Tom Piazza, a longtime New Orleans resident, evoked the sensuous rapture
of the city that gave us jazz music and Creole cooking, but also
examined its deep undercurrents of corruption, racism, and injustice,
and explored how its people endure and transcend those conditions.
Perhaps most important, he asked that we all, as Americans consider our
shared responsibility to this great and neglected metropolis and all the
things it has shared with the world: its grace and beauty, resilience
and soul.
In the years since its first publication, Piazza has continued to
explore the story of New Orleans and its people in many ways--most
notably in his novel City of Refuge and as a writer for the acclaimed
HBO series Treme, created by David Simon. Now, he revisits Why New
Orleans Matters--and, in an all-new foreword for this edition,
re-examines the story of Katrina as a cautionary tale for a nation that
has too often neglected both its treasures and, far more important, its
people.
