Taking responsibility with insight and integrity is difficult. Michael Brown’s soul searching self reflection and analysis of specific variables converging in the tragedy we know as Katrina offers the reader an honest portrait of the events surrounding this storm. Katrina was more than a hurricane. The environmental, geographic, social, economic, and political factors are crucial to our understanding of what happpened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Mr. Brown’s book is a must read for Americans to understand how disasters can snowball into horror; we can learn from our mistakes.