Hurricane Katrina: Through the Eyes of Storm Chasers (ISBN 1560373776)

A captivating photo essay of Katrina:
This is a 96-page book with 100% glossy, full-color interiors showing Hurricane Katrina, the storm that hit Florida and New Orleans in August 2005. Maybe I'm a bit jaded but I expected the pages to be strewn with Newsweek-style images, following the well-travelled route of human-interest pictorial essays. Instead, what I found was a well-documented book that spans the entire spectrum of Katrina. Yes, there is the human interest angle. We see residents boarding up houses in Gulfport. People getting rescued (one, an elderly woman lifted by rescuers while clutching a cigarette). Mississippians trying to deal with the damage and ruin. However there is also good content to feed the left brain. Shots aboard the Gulfstream IV Hurricane Hunter aircraft. Pictures of storm clouds and a true tempest, with residents battling to walk into the wind (real wind, not Weather Channel live report wind). The deluge of the storm surge into a Gulfport hotel, with excellent before & after shots. Large spreads make use of NOAA's damage reconnaissance photos to dissect what happened in Gulfport. This is great, because I argue with the maxim that a book should evoke emotion; I feel that a great work should not only graze at this level (few of us need any reminder that Katrina was tragic) but should also give pause and tantalize the intellect. This, the book does quite well. The main downside is that only eight pages were devoted to the story outside of Mississippi, largely gathered from newspaper stock images. But perhaps what we're actually getting is some balanced coverage. The New Orleans saga will likely be told for centuries, but what happened in Mississippi, which got the full brunt of the storm surge, is already forgotten by the mainstream media. I also think there should have been a sizable fraction of content showing researchers, analysts, and professionals dealing with the storm and its aftermath, in informative National Geographic fashion. But then again, I'm probably envisioning a utopian book about Katrina; after all, this is Through the Eyes of Storm Chasers. The style and format reminds me a lot of the Aerofax, Great Airliners, and Warbird Tech series books that aviation enthusiasts rave about. The color balance and black levels are excellent, but inking and halftoning is just a notch below what I'd consider adequate for a coffee-table book, probably comparable to a color magazine. All but the most discerning people will not notice the difference. The printing was more than good enough for me to pick out detail in any photo I was interested in. Since there probably won't be a storm like this again, and few photo essays have emerged that ascend beyond pandering to emotion, Hurricane Katrina: Through the Eyes of Storm Chasers gets a definite thumbs-up from me.

Amazing Pictures and stories in this book:
I purchased this book for my mom who lives in southern Mississippi. This book really told the story of surviving Hurricaine Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The photographers really took great pictures and brought the area to life for those of us fortunant to not have lived thru such a horrific event. Most of the other books offered were of New Orleans and did not have much information on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I would highly recommend this book.

Incredible....:
For those who want to see the Mississippi results (vs. New Orleans) of Hurricane Katrina need to go no further than this book!