An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known -- the Mississippi flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of nearly one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of blacks north, and transformed American society and politics forever.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award.

"(This) gripping account of the mammoth flooding of 1927 that devastated Mississippi and Louisiana and sent political shock waves to Washington . . . is a brilliant match of scholarship and investigative journalism".--Jason Berry, "Chicago Tribune".

T.H. Watkins The New York Times Book Review Extraordinary...Rising Tide stands not only as a powerful story of disaster but as an accomplished and important social history, magisterial in its scope and fiercely dedicated to unearthing truth.