Rising Tide Chronicles Flow of Changes Essay example -- social issue

Rising soar Chronicles Flow of ChangesJohn M. Barrys Rising Tide The Great disseminated sclerosis Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, takes us back 70 long cadence to a society that most of us would hardly recognize. In 1927, the Mississippi River flooded 27,000 squ atomic number 18 miles from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. No bingle expected the government to help the victims. President Calvin Coolidge even refused to visit the area. As a result, the flood created and destroyed leaders Herbert Hoover, Coolidges secretary of Commerce, was considered politically gone until he took over rescue/relief efforts. His competence and public relations skills sent him to the White House in 1928. (But his duplicity in dealings with black leaders helped begin turning black voters from the Republican society of Lincoln to the Democrats.) The Percy family, planters who had built an empire more or less Greenville, Miss., moved onto the national, even the internati onal, stage. In 1922, LeRoy Percys gumption of obligation to blacks led him to fight the Ku Klux Klan, then a national power. til now in 1927, Percy more than acquiesced when the Mississippi National Guard held black refugees in camps, forcing them to work on levees in conditions close to slavery. In New Orleans, officials dynamited a levee south of the city. Water washing across St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes relieved pressure on New Orleans levees, maybe preventing flooding. But those parishes were ruined. Bankers and city leaders reneged on promises of full compensation to victims. Such backtracking was among the many an(prenominal) resentments people in lah had against the upper classes when they elected Huey Long governor in 1928. The major somatic legacy of the Great Mississippi Flood - an elaborate system of pass up Mississippi River flood manoeuvre measures that have confined larger floods - was belatedly in the news. Fast-forward to March 17, 1997, when the Arm y Corps of Engineers began diverting water around New Orleans for only the eighth time since 1927. The flood also has helped create todays response to disasters quick federal aid, often with the president on hand to take credit. By Jack Williams, USA TODAY survive Editor A major flood on any river is some(prenominal) a long-term and a short-term event, particularly any river lavabo where human influence has exerted control over the ri... ...vaulted Hoover from unlikely presidential candidate to dark-horse candidate to the White House in a clear 18 months. At the time, Hoovers coordination of relief efforts re-earned him the title of The Great Humanitarian -- a far different image of the man than we have today as we link his name and presidency with the Great Depression. Rising Tide is a well-written book with many insights into American social history on only about every page. Although I was disappointed that there was not more said about the floods impact outside the area ar ound atomic number 57 and Mississippi, the story of how politics and the quest for personal power interact with a major natural disaster on one of the worldss major rivers was kind of rivetting. Once started, I found the book hard to put down. If you are looking for a book which successfully combines the human need to control nature with an in-depth history of part of the affected area during a time of disaster, I strongly recommend this book. If your interest is purely in the meteorology and hydrology of a great flood on a great river, you many only be interested in parts of the book, and I would advert looking elsewhere for more detail.