The Mighty Mississippi

Despite my best intentions, I didn't get past the introduction to Henry Louis Gates' lit-crit book, The Signifying Monkey.  Perhaps another time I'll be up for reading it.  I decided to switch to another book that continues my river theme: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, by John M. Barry, who wrote another book I have but haven't yet read, The Great Influenza. 

Before reading this book, I'd heard of the 1927 flood, but only from references to it over the years, the most compelling of which is the song, "Louisiana, 1927,"  by Randy Newman.  Here's a rendition of the song on YouTube, complete with pictures of the flood: Louisiana.

Rising Tide doesn't start at the time of the flood, though.  It starts back in the early 19th century, when people in power were trying to determine how to control the Mississippi's mighty course and its frequent inundations of the surrounding lands.  Their goal was to make the Mississippi more amenable to commercial river traffic so that goods could be transported more quickly and easily between the north and south and between east and west, to accomodate the rapid expansion of settlement to the newly acquired territories.

People of the early 19th century also knew that the land beside the river, because the river had flooded it for millennia, was particularly rich land, good for farming.  People in power wished to claim that land for farming and settlement and to bring more people, more workers, and more money to areas that were previously considered wasteland.  If only they could control the mighty Mississippi, they thought, they could make that wish a reality.  So they set about solving the flooding problem, thinking the combination of American ingenuity and American capital would be no match for even the strongest river.

Unfortunately, according to John Barry, American politics also got involved, and that's where things started to go wrong. I've read about a third of the book so far (it's a hefty 500+ pages), and I'm finding it quite informative but also suspenseful, knowing that all the bad decisions are going to result in the most devastating river flood in American history.

The book also includes a side story of civil rights and the terrible effects of Reconstruction.  Barry focuses in on the Mississippi Delta region and the efforts of some powerful families to shape it into a model of the New South, reborn with the help of better cotton and bigger plantations and streamlined river transport, with newly freed African Americans as key players, or some would say, pawns.

All the drama of greed and the machinations of powerful men make this book more of a tale than a history, which also makes it a good read. Though Barry does bring in quite a bit of evidence to back up his claims, I have to remember that this is one man's take on the events of that era.

In my next post, I'll let you know how things are going with the river and the men who seek to control it.