Shows how the tragedy and suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina signals a much larger crisis in the United States - one that threatens the very nature of individual freedom and inclusive democracy. This book explains how this crisis extends far beyond matters of leadership, governance, or the Bush administration.

1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Rethinking Biopolitics, Biopower and the Politics of Disposability, Neoliberalism in Dark Times, The Biopolitics of Poverty and Race, Conclusion, 2: Dirty Democracy and State Authoritarianism, Dirty Democracy in America, Market Fundamentalism and the Ethos of Privatize or Perish, Religious Fundamentalism and the New Conservatism, The Attack on Critical Thought and Dissent, The Politics of Cronyism and the Return of Old-Style Racism, The Militarization of America, The Struggle for an Oppositional Biopolitics

“Henry Giroux here presents a powerful portrait. Read this book, and join its encomia to think and to act!” —Lewis R. Gordon, author of Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times “Henry Giroux’s Stormy Weather provides a brilliant study of how Hurricane Katrina unmasked the Bush administration’s “politics of disposability,” showing how its policies are anti-life in the deepest sense while maintaining a pro-life rhetoric. Strongly argued and well-documented, Giroux provides a rigorous analysis of growing authoritarianism, militarism, hypocrisy and un-benign neglect in US politics, counterposed to an oppositional biopolitics aiming to enhance human life and struggle towards a more robust U.S. democracy and global cosmopolitanism.” —Douglas Kellner, UCLA “It takes a shock, like Katrina, to tear up the veil that on ‘normal’ days hides from view the deep wounds carved upon our society by poverty, humiliation, and denial of human dignity. It takes another, no lesser if not yet greater shock, like reading Henry Giroux’s cool, thoroughly researched and meticulously balanced account of what Katrina has unveiled and brought into view, to grasp the enormity of pain and the magnitude of misery suffered by the wounded; and to shake off the slumber so that Katrinas be no longer needed to stay awake to the wrongdoing and its victims.” —Zygmunt Bauman “Henry Giroux is one of the country's most astute social and cultural critics. In this meditation on the Katrina catastrophe he takes us beyond that event to give us a brilliant analysis of what Katrina reveals about our society and how we might change the way we live in the world. His book is profound, disturbing, provocative. I hope it will be widely read.” —Howard Zinn