This is a fascinating book about the enormous flood that inundated much of the Mississippi basin in 1927. In fact, the flood covered an areas greater than several northeastern states combined. The flood stretched from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, and in some places the water was thirty feet deep. In a nation of 120 million, over one million were left homeless.The reasons for the flood were numerous: a river policy that emerged from the hatred of two engineers (James Eads and Andrew Humphreys) for each other and brought untold wealth to the planters of the Yazoo-Mississippi delta. The social impact was enormous and resulted, in part, for the black immigration north.
Weeks of nothing but rain culminated in an incredible storm on April 12th that dumped record amounts of rainfall in a very short period of time. As comparison, the flood of 1993 filled the Mississippi at St. Louis so it was moving one million cubic feet of water per second. In 1927, just before the levees broke, the river was moving three times that.
The battle between Eads and Humphreys concerned how to best control the river: outlets for excess water to accumulate, or levees to channel the increased flow. Levees create their own dynamic. If they are built on both sides of the river, the cause the river to move faster, the theory being that the faster flow will scour the river deeper. This does not always occur so levees often have to be built higher. A four-story levee breaking has the same effect as the rupture of a dam.
Barry writes well and takes you right into the midst of the political battles and their outcome.
