Reviews & Praise

“If we are to have a national debate about race and class as a result of the revelations brought by the storm, this book is a fine place to start. It is also a useful platform for a discussion of what citizens have a right to expect from local and federal government… In Come Hell or High Water, his forceful analysis of the issues of race and class revealed in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, ‘hip-hop intellectual’ Michael Eric Dyson recreates in words those powerful visual images of people abandoned in attics, on rooftops, wading through floodwater, suffering in the Superdome… That it was, and that the situation was such an outrage is behind the rigetous anger that fuels Dyson’s fast-paced narrative… As we begin the painful process of rebuilding, Come Hell or High Water provides a stirring exhortation not to fall into the traps of the past.”

“[A] scorching iteration…Dyson weaves it all together with prose that is resonant and rightly angry. The book’s account of FEMA’s stunning ineptitude is especially well detailed.”

“The first major book to be released about Hurricane Katrina…It is certain that not only will Dyson’s book be read as criticism of how America failed Katrina’s victims, it will also be looked to as an authoritative chronicle of what happened and when…This best-selling polemicist knows how to rattle society’s cage, not least of all by alerting us that the cage is there at all.Writers like Dyson remind us that the system we support, overtly or tacitly, fails entire segments of the population along race and class lines.”

“Dyson’s volume not only chronicles what happened when, it also argues that the nation’s failure to offer timely aid to Katrina’s victims indicates deeper problems in race and class relations… his contention that Katrina exposed a dominant culture pervaded not so much by ‘active malice’ toward poor blacks but by a long history of ‘passive indifference’ to their problems is both powerful and unsettling.”

“It is so weirdly ironic and yet so beautifully simple that, after all the years of demonstrating, debating, legislating and raising our voices 'til they were no longer heard, it took the weather—the weather!—to literally and figuratively rip the facade off America's two biggest taboos: Race and Class. Once again, Michael Eric Dyson lays it all out in a way that none of us can ignore. The lessons of Katrina are not just a moment to feel shame, but an opportunity to give ourselves one last chance to deal—truly deal—with the ongoing tragedy of inequality in America. Dyson thinks we can do it and so do I. Every thinking, caring American should read this book. Should we fail to heed its warnings, the next storm we face will involve more than just wind and rain.”

“If the national forgetfulness now setting in about the Katrina disaster is ever dispelled, it will be because of critics like Michael Eric Dyson. He has done an amazing job of dissecting the perfect storm of indifference, incompetence, and injustice that overwhelmed the least of us in the flooded streets of New Orleans. His history is a sober reminder that you get what you pay for—in this case a do-nothing government that did precious little for the black urban poor. We are long overdue for a conversation about race and poverty that doesn’t blame its victims. Dyson’s prophetic voice might just help get it started.”

“In COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, Michael Eric Dyson offers a compelling analysis of the racial, economic and political disasters that harmed the black poor in the Delta long before Hurricane Katrina struck. Dyson’s illuminating narrative of how the government failed the poor is matched by his equally brilliant story of how color, class and religion shaped our response to Katrina. After the storm, the country pledged never to forget the lessons of Katrina, and yet we have already moved on. COME HELL OR HIGH WATER is a searing and eloquent reminder of just what is at stake if we fail to wrestle with the role of poverty and race in our nation’s life. This is social history, cultural criticism and political critique at their elegant and rigorous best.”

“Those who think they understand the full story of Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans are in for a surprise. In this brilliant and sobering analysis, Michael Eric Dyson dissects the Katrina disaster with a surgeon’s scalpel. COME HELL OR HIGH WATER lays bare the racial politics, the ineptitude of Bush functionaries at FEMA, the president’s failed leadership amidst crisis, the arrival of vulture capitalists ready to heap up profits on the backs of the dispossessed, and the bizarre religious meanings of the catastrophe as offered by televangelists and conservative opinion-makers. As one of our premier culture critics, Dyson does not simply expose; he also expostulates. Can we respond to his stirring call to the nation for a real discussion about race and inequality in America in the aftermath of Katrina? Will it be said twenty years from now that disaster in American is no longer color-coded?”