Publications
- Barry, John M., Rising Tide: the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).
Traces the history of the catastrophic 1927 flood and its influence on the country's political, economic, and racial structures.
- Campanella, Richard, Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002).
Visual examination of the geology, geography, and patterns of human development of New Orleans.
- Colten, Craig E., An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).
Examines engineered modifications to New Orleans’s natural environment and their impact on the city's social geography.
- Colten, Craig E., Transforming New Orleans and its Environs: Centuries of Change (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001).
Traces the environmental history of the Lower Mississippi Valley region from the prehistoric era through late twentieth century urban and industrial development.
- Cowdrey, Albert, Land's End: A History of the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Its Lifelong Battle with the Lower Mississippi and Other Rivers Wending Their Way to the Sea (New Orleans: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1977).
Details Federal flood control efforts in the Lower Mississippi Valley region from 1717 to 1975.
- Hallowell, Christopher, Holding Back the Sea: the Struggle for America's Natural Legacy on the Gulf Coast (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001).
Discusses loss of wetlands and the vulnerable oil and gas industry along the Gulf Coast. Argues that the Federal government must commit to a "massive" program of environmental restoration.
- Harrison, Robert W., Alluvial Empire (Little Rock, AR: Pioneer Press, 1961).
A study of State and local efforts toward land development in the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River, including flood control, land drainage, land clearing, and land forming.
- Kelman, Ari, A River and Its City: the Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Kelman discusses New Orleans and its relationship to the waterfront: the battle between public and private use and the impact of floods, disease, and chagning technologies.
- Lewis, Pierce, New Orleans: the Making of an Urban Landscape (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2003).
Historical geography tracing the evolution of New Orleans.
- McPhee, John, The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989).
Investigaion of the human struggle against nature, including the attempts made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to redirect the natural flow of the Mississippi River.
- Shallat, Todd, Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).
Examines the rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from its European antecedents through the boom years of river development after the American Civil War.
- Snowden, J.O., J.R.J. Studlick, and W.C. Ward, Geology of Greater New Orleans: Its Relationship to Land Subsidence and Flooding (New Orleans: New Orleans Geological Society, 1980).
- Streever, Bill, Saving Louisiana? the Battle for Coastal Wetlands (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2001).
Discusses the conflicts between scientists, politicians, and local residence over who is responsible for the environmental crisis in southern Louisiana.
- Vileisis, Ann, Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands (Washington, D.D.: Island Press, 1999).
Explores changing attitudes toward wetlands through history, including the formation of the Army Corp of Engineers (and their rise to power in controlling wetlands alteration) and the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act in the late 1960s, as well as the expanding role of citizens in policy making after WWII.