Ten years ago on August 29, 2005, nearly 80 percent of New Orleans found itself underwater. Over the following months, the New York Times sent its correspondent Gary Rivlin to live in New Orleans and report on the city’s effort to rebuild. To this day, much of New Orleans are still in shambles and few outside of the city understand the nature of the chaos that ensued during and after the storm.


In his new book Katrina: After The Flood, Rivlin reveals how the story of Katrina, and why its impact was so devastating, was much more complicated than the simple narrative much of the media was providing. A decade after the disaster, he joins Josh Zepps on Point of Inquiry this week to discuss how Katrina created a huge racial and class division in New Orleans, and how we might learn from the mistakes that were made in managing the aftermath of the storm.