Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

Barry, John M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684840022 ISBN 13: 9780684840024

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1998

An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, "Rising Tide" tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known-- the Mississippi flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of nearly one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of blacks north, and transformed American society and politics forever. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award.

Review:

Tom Wicker This is the kind of history I love -- the brilliantly told story of the great Mississippi flood of 1927, a disaster for millions but the making of a future president and a turning point for the nation.

Jim Squires Los Angeles Times An important contribution to history and literature.

T.H. Watkins The New York Times Book Review Extraordinary...Rising Tide stands not only as a powerful story of disaster but as an accomplished and important social history, magisterial in its scope and fiercely dedicated to unearthing truth.

From the Publisher:

Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post, 4/28/97
"Rising Tide" is a big, ambitious book that is not merely engrossing and informative but also has the potential to change the way we think, and thus the way we act, about great rivers and the waters that run through them....This is, no kidding, breathtaking stuff;..."Rising Tide" is splendid and informative reading.