I can think of no better author in the post-9/11 world to write on this subject. As a kind of modern version of what used to be called a curmudgeon, Amis has experienced both the anguish and joys of New Orleans first-hand. He also had the prescience to draw on his own flight-syndrome instincts not once, but twice, before the hurricane came. So if he's saying New Orleans is dead, and here's why, as a prognostication and social, political and economic statement, then this book is no mere quick send-off to capitalize on a popular topic immediately after the storm. If you don't believe it, just look at the place now. Sure, the tourist avenues, high and dry, are still open, but the rest of the place is an apocalytic wasteland. Thank you Mr. Amis using this format for expressing your angst, and for finding a way to get your rich, painful, shall we say, vulnerable prose out to the public.

I have followed author Rod Amis's writings on the web since back during the internet boom when he was a tech columnist for Andover. When the boom went bust, so did his columnist gig and he landed in New Orleans as an unemployed black where he did whatever he could find to put a little food (most often beans and rice) on the table and a roof (often with crazy roomies) over his head.

He documented his Nawlins travails on his www.G21.net web site in weekly musings.

Rod has mined those gems for background on the real Nawlins and added lots of research on the Katrina hurricane and its aftermath on the city and residents of New Orleans. It is not a pretty picture that he paints for the future nor the past for a city known for its music, booze, and tourist industry. Accurate eyewitness accounts are rarely pretty, but they are what we need to get a feel for the real situation.

His book is a must read for current and former NOLA residents -- it is the city you know and probably still love, despite the warts that Amis uncovers. You'll definitely recognize the landmarks and, no doubt, some of the characters he names. The book will be an eye opener to anyone who played tourist there in the past. And if you've never been there, the book will give you the scoop that all the media hordes missed in the hours upon hours of nonstop Katrina coverage.

"New Orleans is a city of versions," we are told. You don't get lies, you don't get facts. You get each person's "version" of a story, of an issue, of the city.

"There were two New Orleans, Louisianas..." the author begins. The shiny, glitzy, bead-tossing town of Mardi Gras, ghost walks, and creole crawfish. And then there is the boozy, brawlin' Nawlins, that would peek out at you from between store front facades.

It's this second--downtrodden and impoverished--city that America saw after the hurricane. And it's this city of "love, lust, death and sex" that Amis takes us to.

"Katrina and the Lost City of New Orleans" is a swaggering, gonzo, neo-noir eulogy. Amis takes us to his former haunts in the Ninth Ward. Behind the bar where he worked. To the underbelly of the city most of America only saw in myth. To the city that tried to kill him. The city he loves, still, and will always miss.

Reading this book you can literally see, hear, and smell the streets that are now under water. You can catch a last fleeting glimpse at the town that will be replaced by a "damned neutered theme park, sanitized and rated PG": safe for tourists, fun for some, and real to no one. You get one last lingering look at "The New Orleans Way."

Some of my favorite passages:

"There were two New Orleans, Louisiana's before Hurricane Katrina. There was the real Nawlins, where most of us who lived there spent our days. And there was the fantasy New Orleans that only included the high rise hotels on Canal Street, whose heart was Bourbon Street and whose soul peeked out for the tourists from between the souvenir shops in the rest of the French Quarter.

Year after year, those of us living and scraping along to survive in the real Nawlins, would watch people breeze into town for conventions or Mardi Gras or JazzFest and never once think about looking at the city we lived in and loved/hated. It was the adventurous visitor who would at least take in our Museum of Art at City Park in MidCity. Somebody went to Tipitinas or Vaugn's , we'd damned near give a medal."

"New Orleans, by my own avowal and that of many, was the American Haiti."

"If you lived in New Orleans, you knew that between the drugs and the booze and the just plain ignorance of too many folks, in a place where just about every house had at least one gat and all of life was fueled by the volatile mix of sultry tropical weather, passion and lunacy, somebody was bound to get shot today."

Hunter S., may he rest in peace, has nothing on this guy.