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FRANKLIN - Jed Horne, former metro editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune and author of "Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City," has been the author-in-residence at Dean College from Sept. 24 through today. While on campus, he has taught and taken part in a series of presentations, readings and other activities.

Horne retired from daily journalism in June 2007 to devote more time to writing books. He has spoken publicly about Hurricane Katrina at many colleges and universities, including Harvard and Wheelock in Massachusetts. He lives in New Orleans with his wife.

Last week, Horne took time to speak with us about his book and the lessons and legacy of Katrina.

I read that you were born in Massachusetts. Whereabouts?

I was born in Greenfield. When I was about 10, we moved to New Jersey. My father was an educator. He took over a K-12 country day school in suburban New York. I came to college at Harvard then got involved in the Phoenix weekly newspaper for a while, drove a cab for a while, pumped gas for a while, did the Lord's work. Then moved to New York, did the devil's bidding as part of the magazine industry down there, working for Time, working for Life magazine. I left New York City to go upstate and raise children. In 1988, we moved to New Orleans. What attracted you to New Orleans? I was picky about what city I would work in. There are others I certainly would have been happy to work in, but New Orleans was one of the most interesting. My wife spent a lot of time in the Third World and we have lived in Latin America, and New Orleans is sort of comfortable in that respect. New Orleans is like a Third World country. New Orleans had the best opportunity for me, so we made the move. We weren't sure we'd stay, but it seemed like a good place to check out. And 20 years later we are still there.

In the new edition of "Breach of Faith," you bring readers up to date on post-Katrina recovery. In the epilogue, you write that the levees have not been rebuilt to handle category 5 hurricanes. Tell me about that.

To me that's outrageous. Initially, there was an acquiescence on the part of the city. We'd had it; we'd been beaten up so bad that we rolled over with the announcement from the administration in Washington that we were going to get a 100-year flood defense. It's not enough to have averted catastrophe with Katrina, certainly not enough to avert catastrophe with a category 5 storm. Had Gustav stayed on course, we would have seen a city go under water for the second time in three years. Fortunately, like many storms, it veered away at the last minute. But it fostered a sense of security on the part of the mayor, who stood up and said, "Aha, this proves that we are back and we're bullet-proof and now you're going to see an influx of corporate dollars." No, not true. The message of Gustav is that the city is very, very vulnerable and that serious attention needs to be paid to the levee system beyond anything currently promised.

In your book, you describe an ad hoc approach to the recovery effort, particularly at the beginning. Do you see any prospect for a more unified, cohesive single-plan process going forward?

The prospects I'm afraid are not as great as they might have been because too many seeds have been sewn, sometimes in the wrong soil. The big controversy had to do with the mayor's decision to allow resettlement everywhere. In the face of a re-election campaign, he felt he couldn't antagonize people who lived out in the farther reaches of the city where the flooding threat was greatest.

The greater concern is that we'll see pockets of rebuilding surrounded by seas of blight. These are not rich people. They threw what they had into their homes as they attempted to rebuild them. Now they find themselves living in homes they can't sell, they can't insure. So that's been a source of concern.

There are some interesting and better thought out recovery models in play, however. The medical system is being rethought because the principle hospital was destroyed. The hope is to go to community health centers, satellite clinics, get people out of the emergency room, get them treated preemptively, get wellness care going, do whatever ultimately the whole nation will have to do to control costs if we go to a universal health insurance program.

We also completely rethought our school system. We moved to charters. Though there are many critics of that approach because it's judged to be privatization of a public asset, the early returns are pretty good. We have much more animated campuses, a sense of autonomy for principals who want to be creative. So I'm reserving judgment until we see the extent to which qualifiable improvements occur.

New Orleans has become a laboratory for its own reinvention, and perhaps for the reinvention of cities across the country.

Did a piecemeal approach to recovery and the failure of government to step up more effectively encourage people to rely more on their own resilience and determination? The surprise in all this for me, and I think for New Orleans, was the resilience and the resourcefulness of grassroots, community-level politics. Yes, you're right, it may well have been a response to the vacuum created by the failure of elected leadership to get out of its own way and provide some kind of direction.

Last week, the White House proposed a $700 billion no-contingency, no-strings-attached bailout for Wall Street to prevent further collapse of the financial sector. From what you write in your book, New Orleans wasn't afforded the same no-strings-attached deal. What do you make of that?

Needless to say, we're frustrated by our failure - for political reasons, perhaps even racial reasons - to get the whole-hearted support from Washington that Henry Paulson's friends have been able to get in Washington for Wall Street. The other comparable experience, prior to this nationalization of the financial sector, has been Iraq. To rebuild New Orleans' levees correctly, to build a flood defense levee of some consequence, it is estimated to cost $30 billion. We're spending that kind of money every two months in Iraq. We make choices. It's quite possible that the choice not made in New Orleans cannot now be made because the treasury essentially will exhaust itself in service to millionaire stockbrokers and bond traders in New York.

We also, of course, are aware of claims from other storm centers, like Houston, the fourth largest city in the country. Texas is infinitely more powerful than Louisiana, electorally speaking. It's also a Republican stronghold; New Orleans is an enclave of Democratic politics in an otherwise Republican state.

A search on Amazon.com retrieves dozens of books about the Katrina experience - a rich array of fiction, poetry, memoir, journalism, academic works, songs. What's the meaning of that?

The wonderful thing is there's been this influx of very creative, committed people willing to serve, whether it's to rebuild a gutted house or to serve in a clinic, or it's people who make movies or write books. That is very exciting. There's been an upsurge of excitement, enthusiasm, creativity, amongst a group of often young people who've wanted to make a difference. In the case of college students, they're sick of getting drunk in Fort Lauderdale, so they wanted something a little more constructive to do on spring break, and New Orleans is the beneficiary, and in a big way. And it's become magnetic, and people have come down from all over the country and from other countries. There's tremendous energy in that, and if we could only see the equivalent energy from Washington, from Baton Rouge, it'd be great.

(Editor's note: Spring 2009 will mark the third year in which Dean College students will travel to New Orleans during spring break to help in the recovery effort.)

You once said that "Breach of Faith" took root in anger. Has any of that anger dissipated? Where are you now emotionally with regard to this story?

I think all of us who have given much thought to the situation are still pretty angry. But, anger is not necessarily a constructive response. It's energizing, but then you need to think a little more reflectively and a little more strategically about what's going on. One hopes that one's analysis becomes a little more subtle, a little more responsive to changing realities. I'd like to think that's reflective in "Breach of Faith." Others may disagree.

What's your message for this Massachusetts community - 1,500 miles from New Orleans?

Well, there are two messages. One message is, thank you to those of you who have been able to support the city's attempt at recovery.

The other message is, pay close attention because you may be next. Katrina was a test. The first full dress-rehearsal test of the Department of Homeland Security in an age fraught with much greater peril.

When the Pilgrim nuke goes, which happens to be managed by a New Orleans corporation, Entergy, you all may be in urgent need of the kind of coordinated evacuation and rebuild that we have seen. But that's an extreme case. Much more close at hand is the collapse of the American infrastructure for lack of investment. In the last 20 or 30 years, we've chosen to foist off to our children and grandchildren these costs. Today that bill is coming due. It's come due in Minneapolis with the bridge collapsing. It came due in New Orleans with the levee system collapsing. Aside from the earthquake threat, the entire central valley of California is vulnerable to flooding. If the faulty levee system around Sacramento fails, you'll have salt water through the American breadbasket. The consequences are potentially catastrophic.