The inside story of why America’s emergency response system failed so catastrophically in Hurricane Katrina – and how it remains dangerously broken

Disaster named Best Non-Fiction of 2006 The Washington Post declared DISASTER one of the best books of the year in the current events category, calling it: "The best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get -- and a call to arms." See the WashPost list HBO buys "Disaster" HBO has acquired "Disaster," to develop as a miniseries. Director and cast have yet to be named. See the Variety story on the acquisition EXCERPT: The Wall Street Journal has published a free chapter of Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security. Read the excerpt

When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on the morning of August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring—despite all the drills, exercises, and warnings. In this troubling exposé of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block of The Wall Street Journal show that the flaws go much deeper than out-of-touch federal bureaucrats or overwhelmed local politicians.

Cooper and Block take readers inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during Hurricane Katrina – the bad decisions, the ignored facts, the individuals who saw that the system was broken but did nothing to fix it.

Cooper and Block reveal the crucial moment on the day the storm hit when the entire enterprise could have been put on a proper footing – but for a single, terrible, and unnecessary miscommunication between the federal and state authorities. They also show how the Department of Homeland Security transformed FEMA, once a model of government service, into a broken agency unequal to the task of rescuing the Katrina victims. Disaster shows in alarming detail how the Bush administration's obsessive focus on shadowy terrorist threats undermined the government’s ability to respond to more frequent natural disasters – even though the logistics of providing food, water, shelter, and transportation ought to have been the same.

The incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain.

This is a book no American can afford to ignore.