Reviewed by: Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City Carolyn G. Kolb (bio) Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City. By Jed Horne . New York: Random House, 2006. Pp. 432. $24.95. As a pivotal event in history, Hurricane Katrina deserves close inspection, and Jed Horne's Breach of Faith offers a dispassionate overall survey, more in the style of an encyclopedia article than a news exposé. Horne's coverage of the national political situation rings true—the disastrous federal response and the Republican president's partisan shortchanging of aid for Democratic-led Louisiana in favor of Mississippi, a state in the hands of his own party. Horne is evenhanded with beleaguered Democratic Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, calling Blanco's steely refusal to put the state's National Guard under federal control (something not asked of Mississippi) a sound decision, grounded in law. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, like Blanco much vilified on all levels, is treated fairly within the limitations of his laissez-faire governing style. Horne very carefully lays out the case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for monumental negligence in the collapse of the walls of the drainage canals and the design flaws inherent in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. He provides the best available overall record of what went wrong, [End Page 870] when, and why, and he thoroughly covers the work of journalists and writers who addressed the debacle, including Ivor van Heerden, the feisty South African hurricane theorist at Louisiana State University. Breach of Faith takes its shape from intertwined interviews, collated but not necessarily conducted by Horne, with Hurricane Katrina victims, officials, first responders, businessmen, evacuees, and representatives from all economic levels. The opening story belongs to Patrina Peters, an African-American woman trapped by the flood on the roof of her home in the Lower Ninth Ward. Peters today proudly displays the book and vouches for its accuracy in telling her tale. But of all the human stories that might have been told in Breach of Faith, the most notable absence is Jed Horne's own. So careful is he to preserve anonymity that when he thanks Jane Wholey he does not identify her as his wife. All we find out about Horne is that he is a French Quarter resident, a Times-Picayune editor, and part of the newspaper's team that earned a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for Katrina coverage. The Times-Picayune, now part of the Newhouse chain, was named for the tiny coin it once cost. Since 1958 it has been the only newspaper corporation in town. Today Newhouse decries corporate involvement in editorial affairs, but its coffers have facilitated improvements in the quality of its staff. When he was hired in 1988, Horne came with two Harvard degrees, experience on the staff of national magazines, and as city editor of the Kingston (New York) Freeman. From the Hudson River to the Mississippi River was a long cultural leap, but he and his wife have been involved citizens and parents (and their French Quarter home was happily away from the flooded area). Occasionally his outside observer status or lack of institutional memory shows. Savvy watchers of the Louisiana legislature would know that the Times-Picayune-supported law to have only one assessor for Orleans Parish actually carries no qualification requirements for the post. Levee board reforms, the consolidation of local offices, and the distribution of federal relief money are all aimed at widening state power at the ultimate expense of the city of New Orleans, which fought hard for its municipal autonomy against Huey Long and other Louisiana governors. Horne echoes Times-Picayune approval of these state moves. One of his few un-Picayune lapses is when he refers to the strident "Citizens For 1 Greater New Orleans" reformers as "bottle blonds." This group's leader, Ruth Frierson, just received the newspaper's 2007 Loving Cup for civic service. Breach of Faith is satisfying as a dense, fact-based chronicle of the first phases and immediate aftermath of a major disaster, but if you want a wrenching and heartfelt personal account...