Displaying the intellectual rigor, political passion, and personal empathy that have won him acclaim, Dyson offers a searing assessment of the meaning of Hurricane Katrina. He warns that society must acknowledge that Katrina was more than an engineering or emergency response failure.

Michael Eric Dyson has been named by Ebony as one of the one hundred most influential black Americans and is the author of fourteen other books. He is University Professor at Georgetown University and lives in Washington, D.C.