New Orleans--the Books You Should and Shouldn't Read

For anyone still wondering why I insist on reminding readers of the culpability of the Army Corps of Engineers for the suffering of New Orleans, and why Anderson Cooper comes in for regular derision on this site, please go read this masterful review of the recent raft of so-called Katrina books. Michael Grunwald, who has covered the Corps and its follies for the Washington Post, puts it in crystal-clear English:
The drowning of New Orleans was a tragedy of priorities, and protecting this low-lying soupbowl of a city was no one's priority. The Corps spent more in Louisiana than in any other state, but it wasted most of the money on ecologically harmful and fiscally wasteful pork that kept its employees busy and its political patrons happy, while neglecting hurricane protection for New Orleans. One of its pork projects, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, actually intensified Katrina's surge.
But he also actually did the hard work of reading Cooper's memoir, unearthing this gem of telepathic "reporting":
Just as we come back from a commercial break, a pickup truck drives by. In the back a young man with a trucker hat holds up a tattered American flag. He salvaged it from the wreckage. He's tired and worn, but proud of that flag, proud that he and his family are still standing. We don't speak--he is too far away--but I look him in the eye and we nod to each other. In his face I think I detect betrayal and anger, but also strength and resolve. I'm on the air, but I find myself tearing up. My throat tightens; I'm almost unable to speak.

Unfortunately, he wasn't even unable to write. No paragraph better sums up this style of journalism--why bother to speak to the guy when you can look him in the eye and detect what he's feeling? And it's a moment Cooper is proud enough of to include in his book.