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The Big Truck That Went By: How The World Came To Save Haiti And Left Behind A Disaster (2013)

by Jonathan M. Katz(Favorite Author)

4.08 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

023034187X (ISBN13: 9780230341876)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Palgrave Macmillan Trade

review 1: I've no doubt that reading other books might offer different spins on Haiti and its horrific misfortunes. Katz doesn't hold back from giving his opinions, but his authority is created upon his actually being there for the years in question, experiencing the massive earthquake itself and the countless aftershocks thereafter--the geological aftershocks as well as a host of others. Katz was there, an AP journalist, in position to write the story, and he does. It's not pretty, but then I imagine most of Haiti wasn't pretty post-apocalypse--and maybe still is not. Then again, to read Katz's take on Haitian history is to realize that those of us comfortably situated in the U.S. of A., need to accept our share of the blame for significant problems which continue to beset this st... moreruggling nation right on our southern doorstep. The NGOs come in for lots of criticism, but that's not rare these days. Hundreds of well-intention-ed efforts to help often seemed mismatched and piecemeal, attempting to wipe up horrors with Charmin tissue. The Clintons come in for some criticism as well, even though both of them played significant roles in the recovery. What Katz says rather forthrightly (and argues for as well) is the importance of believing and investing in governmental infrastructure, despite the widespread conviction (and there's lots of evidence) that the government, whoever is at its head, is finally and fully corrupt. Until the government can do some of the things that NGOs insist on doing, he asserts, nothing will finally improve in Haiti. I'm very glad to have read--or listened to--this fascinating memoir of his time in Haiti; but if you're looking for something for the beach, look on a different shelf.
review 2: Jonathan M. Katz was the Associated Press correspondent in Haiti awaiting reassignment to Afghanistan on Jan. 12, 2010, when the house he was living in collapsed around him. It was the disastrous Haiti earthquake, and Katz -- who was uninjured -- would spend the next year chronicling the quake and its aftermath The result is this book, which is part memoir and part policy analysis. It's all disheartening, or perhaps maddening is a better word.In the process, Katz challenges three myths about disasters in general and the Haiti earthquake in particular. There usually isn't widespread looting, and there wasn't in Haiti. A disaster isn't usually followed by an epidemic, and it wasn't in Haiti -- the cholera epidemic that arose months later had nothing to do with the earthquake itslef. And a corrupt Haitian government was only a very small part of the problem of getting appropriate aid to the right people in a timely way.I thought the most maddening chapter of all was the one titled "A gut feeling" about that epidemic -- brought to Haiti through the negligence of the United Nations. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't come across very well, either.I think these sentences from the epilogue are an apt summary:"The enormous talent, money and goodwill of the postquake response left an ironic legacy in Haiti. Having sought above all to prevent riots, ensure stability and prevent disease, the responders helped spark the first, undermine the second and by all evidence caused the third."Maddening. Also well-written, and hard to put down. less

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