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

rising Tide Chronicles Flow of Changes deception M. Barrys Rising Tide The striking Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, takes us plunk for 70 years to a society that most of us would just recognize. In 1927, the Mississippi River flooded 27,000 square miles from Illinois and Missouri south to the disconnection of Mexico. No unrivaled expected the government to help the victims. President Calvin Coolidge change surface refused to visit the airfield. As a result, the flood created and destroyed leaders Herbert clean, Coolidges depositary of Commerce, was considered politically dead until he took over rescue/relief efforts. His competency and public relations skills sent him to the White House in 1928. (But his deceitfulness in dealings with stark leaders helped begin turning black voters from the Republican Party of Lincoln to the Democrats.) The Percy family, planters who had built an empire around Greenville, Miss., moved onto the national, level off the international, stage. In 1922, LeRoy Percys sense of obligation to blacks led him to fight the Ku Klux Klan, then a national advocator. Yet in 1927, Percy more than acquiesced when the Mississippi National bear 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 metropolis. Water washing across St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes improve 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 resentments peck in Louisiana had against the upper classes when they elected Huey Long governor in 1928. The major physical legacy of the Great Mississippi Flood - an fatten up system of lower Mississippi River flood control measures that ease up throttle larger floods - was recently in the news. Fast-forward to March 17, 1997, when the Army Corps of Engineers began risible water around New Orleans for only the eighth judgment of conviction since 1927. The flood also has helped create todays response to disasters quick federal aid, a lot with the president on hand to take credit. By Jack Williams, ground forces TODAY Weather Editor A major flood on any river is both a long-term and a short-term event, peculiarly any river basin 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 mere 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 just about every page. Although I was disappointed that there was not more said about the floods impact outside the cranial orbit around Louisiana 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 quite rivetting. Once started, I found the book heavy(a) 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 rigorously in the meteorology and hydrology of a great flood on a great river, you many only be interested in separate of the book, and I would suggest looking elsewhere for more detail.