Eyes of the Storm : The Story in Pictures of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Book

The Dallas Morning News had more staff photographers on the scene than any other news organization when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast at the end of August and beginning of September. These Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers caught every aspect of the storm and its aftermath on film and many of those photos will be seen for the first time in this stirring work of photojournalism at its best. Nearly 270 images-culled from over 3,000 taken before, during, and after Katrina struck-capture the heartbreak of hundreds of thousands of people suddenly made homeless, Gulf Coast towns completely wiped out by wind and storm surge, and, ultimately, scenes of hope as people return, rebuild, and rebound from one of the nation's worst natural disasters. Looking past the political and bureaucratic squabbles that seem to have dominated the news at the expense of human suffering, the book's focus is squarely on the people of Katrina-both rescuer and rescued, old and young, helpful and heroic. For every scene of utter devastation there is a corresponding image of the will to survive, such as a church service in a parking lot, or a horse seeking refuge from a flooded paddock by climbing on to the front porch of a house. Separations as well as reunions are captured in moving images that will endure alongside classic photographs from America's previous calamities, and will draw comparisons to the work of Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans. Eyes of the Storm is not only a graphic visual record of nature at its most malevolent, but also a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.