Eyes of the Storm: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: The Photographic Story

The top editors at the Dallas Morning News, accustomed to dire warnings about killer storms that never materialize, imagined a weakened Hurricane Katrina would make an anti-climactic landfall. But they positioned their teams of photographers and reporters before the storm hit, a decision that helped produce some of the most evocative images of the cataclysm that devastated the Gulf Coast. Those photographs, along with pictures from the succeeding September storm, Hurricane Rita, fill this chronicle of the events of late summer of 2005. But it is Katrina photos from New Orleans and its environs that dominate this volume. The opening shots document the monstrous traffic jams endured by those who fled Katrina's approach and the dismissive partying of some never-say-die denizens of the French Quarter before the levees burst and a post-apocalyptic chaos descended on the city. Every photograph is memorable, but some are standouts, such as the shot of a woman whose husband's hand rests on her shoulder, their fingers touching, or the aerial shot of two dogs as they ""inspect"" a corpse. The book concludes with short biographical sketches of the photojournalists and brief accounts of the stories behind images. Readers would do well to pick up this catalogue of the heart-rending scenes that outraged the nation and the world-and altered the lives of both the subjects and the photographers.