Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana

Few scholars have done more to bridge the fields of geography and environmental history than Craig E. Colten. Now. in Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana, Colten extends his interdisciplinary studies of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana with a thoughtful examination of the checkered history of attempts to shield the Big Easy from the ravages of coastal storms. Although the book stops short of what happened after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, its analysis of the city's evolving storm-protection system - an ever-expanding patchwork of flood-control structures - illustrates how well-intentioned projects can sometimes transform extreme weather events into human disasters.