The Eric Hoffer Award Program has released the judges comments for Sandy Rosenthal’s book Words Whispered in Water: Why the Levees Broke in Hurricane Katrina.

Founder Rosenthal’s book, published by Mango Media in August 2020, has received the 2021 First Horizon Award for “superior work by a debut author in Non-Fiction.”

Here are the judges comments:

“Part memoir, part exposé, Rosenthal employs the surgical precision of a investigative journalist and the craft of a memoirist to expose the flaws, natural and human, behind the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Fueled by personal history and a fierce sense of social advocacy, Rosenthal goes beyond the received Katrina narrative and the media that advanced that narrative to uncover corruption, bureaucracy and a failing infrastructure. Rosenthal balances the deeply personal with a keen documentarian’s eye to create an engaging and compelling account. Incisive, exhaustively researched and deeply engaging, Rosenthal offers an enlightening and cautionary account within a riveting and compelling read.”

In her book, Rosenthal describes how she created the group Levees.org to find out the true reason that New Orleans flooded in August of 2005.

In her quest for the facts, she discovered that the culprit, the US Army Corps of Engineers had spent millions fooling the American public and harassing anyone who stood in its way.

For more about the First Horizon Award, click here.