Anderson Cooper breaks from his objective viewpoint in his memoir Dispatches from the Edge. He interleaves tales of his travels to various scenes of disaster and unrest with memories of his father's death and his brother's unexplained suicide. The primary focus of the book turns out to be the devastation in New Orleans and the surrounding area in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. He asks the question, and rightly so, as to how bodies can remain uncollected in this country for days on end. He makes the point that in many developing countries the people have no expectation of help from the government and know that recovery from disaster is on their shoulders. We have different expectations, however, in the U.S., but the various levels of government failed miserably in this case. Can it happen again? You bet.
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