America's Great Storm: Leading Through Hurricane Katrina
Haley Barbour was born on October 22, 1947, in Yazoo City, MS. He earned his B.A. and law degrees from the University of Mississippi. Barbour worked on President Nixon's 1968 election campaign. In 1970, he was in charge of the US Census for Mississippi. From 1973 to 1976, he was the executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party. He worked on Gerald Ford's presidential campaign in 1976 and John Connally's presidential campaign in 1980. Barbour was the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997. In January 2004, he was sworn into office as Mississippi's 63rd governor and served two terms.
Jere Nash collaborated with Haley Barbour in writing America's Great Storm. Nash is a native of Greenville, MS, who has worked as a political consultant for forty-five years.
Synopsis
America's Great Storm: Leading Through Hurricane Katrina was published on August 19, 2015, just before the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall. The book is an autobiographical account of former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour's leadership before, during, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It features sections on pre-landfall, landfall, search and rescue, along with an account of recovery and legislative sessions.
Overview
The book’s chapters tell firsthand accounts of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath from community members, first responders, and politicians in Mississippi. All of chapter four is spent discussing different ways Mississippians were affected but united after the storm. The chapter discusses Governor Barbour’s efforts to support the owner of a tow truck company who had lost everything during Katrina.
The book notes that over 600,000 volunteers signed up to aid with cleanup across Mississippi, and over 250 different organizations offered their help. The Episcopal Day School in Long Beach, Mississippi, was used as a distribution center for food, clothes, and other aid for those across the Gulf Coast. Bishop Duncan Gray III utilized his position and connections in the national Episcopal church to help hurricane victims.
The following chapters go into detail about Barbour’s political efforts to bring aid to Mississippi from the federal government and other state governments. Barbour stresses that people across Mississippi came together to support each other despite their losses to push through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
Recommendations
After reading America's Great Storm: Leading Through Hurricane Katrina, there are many related materials recommended for reading and reviewing (including the other works featured in this exhibit).
Two interviews have been published with Barbour in recent years (2023 and 2024), featuring his experiences during Hurricane Katrina. In the 2024 article published by the Biloxi Sun Herald, Barbour recounts his time with President Bush on the Gulf Coast dealing with Katrina's aftermath.
For more about Haley Barbour, take a look at Agenda for America: A Republican Direction for the Future, Barbour’s first book, published in 1996. It was written to “proclaim the Republican vision for a renewed America, and detail the principles that must be held fast as we remake American government--those essential to the institution of government by the people, for the people.” It gives insights into Barbour, his ideals and opinions, and his leadership style.
America's Great Storm and Salvage the Bones
These two works reflect on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, but do so in very different ways. They both address key topics and themes, but one is a fictionalized story of the events while another is a firsthand account. Even though these two works capture the same event in different ways, they still have many connections that tie them together.
- In Salvage the Bones, Ward depicts Katrina as a terrifying and looming essence. The storm is practically a character herself. She grows more present and terrifying throughout the novel, building tension and reflecting the family’s vulnerability. In America’s Great Storm, Katrina is described in stark, factual terms as a monstrous force, illustrated with statistics and evidence of destruction. It's more clinical but equally terrifying. Both depict Katrina not just as weather, but as something living, unpredictable, and powerful, almost mythic in its scale.
- One main thing Ward aimed to accomplish with her novel was to highlight how disasters disproportionately affect poor communities, specifically how Katrina impacted impoverished Black families on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The novel also makes the point that the government is almost absent. There's no FEMA. No help. No evacuation buses. It's just the family and their instincts. America’s Great Storm often discusses the failures from inside of the system: how a lack of planning, poor infrastructure, and miscommunication severely impacted the reaction to the storm. Even though it’s from an insider’s perspective, Barbour criticizes the lack of preparation. He points out that the most vulnerable were abandoned or overlooked. In different ways, these works emphasize how poverty and race intersect with natural disasters, showing how those at these crossroads are hit hardest and helped the least. They also both discuss the institutional neglect that was present at this time. Ward shows it through lived experience, Barbour through insider failures. Together, they tell a fuller picture of abandonment.
- Family is a very key theme in Ward’s novel. Esch’s relationship with her brothers, her father, and the close human-animal bond between Skeetah and China are examples. It is important for Ward to show how tight family bonds can be a vital survival mechanism. America’s Great Storm focuses more on leadership and responsibility, but when individuals such as trapped or displaced citizens are mentioned, it’s clear that survival often depended on family, neighbors, or even strangers stepping up. In both, survival is a team effort. It is not just about individuals being strong, but about both community and familes banding together in times of need, and people helping each other when institutions fail.
Critical Reception
America’s Great Storm: Leading Through Katrina got several reviews from respected individuals regarding Barbour’s political efforts following Katrina and the attention his book brought to Mississippi’s experience with the storm.
"Governor Haley Barbour's personal account of how he responded to the Hurricane Katrina disaster is a study in effective leadership. Required reading for all those interested in learning how one leader of one state can make a difference in the lives of thousands. A Mississippi and national hero."
- Kenneth R. Feinberg, administrator of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and other compensation programs
"Hurricane Katrina revealed the character of America's leaders in its rawest form. Too many were tragically overmatched by the great flood's force and fury. But Haley Barbour stood alone, equal to the challenge before him in a way that lifted his state and inspired a nation. On this somber anniversary, we are fortunate to get this recounting of the Mississippi governor moving through those gripping times with strength and certainty. Like Barbour himself, this story is nothing less than inspiring."
- Joe Scarborough, former Florida congressman and host of MSNBC's Morning Joe
"Governor Barbour has been a tremendous advocate for smart emergency management. As director of Florida's Emergency Management Division, I witnessed firsthand his commitment to putting survivors first. During the response to Katrina, he cut red tape and supported our work to get resources into the hands of those who needed them most by helping us treat Mississippi counties like Florida counties. Working across state lines helped us save lives and helped Mississippi recover from this disaster more quickly."
- William Craig Fugate, former director of Florida's Emergency Management Division
Exhibit page by
BRYCE DEUPREE
JORJA LAYTON
ANNA KATE RATCLIFFE
BRENDEN ROGNESS