Four years ago, Peter and I were in a car in Nevada, driving through the driest wastelands imaginable and listening to the horrible news on the radio: New Orleans engulfed in floodwaters. It was riveting and awful to listen at such a remove. I think the only time we laughed was when they interviewed a Dutch hydrologist, who, in typical Dutch fashion, just simply could not understand how the Americans could fail to keep their lowlands dry.

Eventually our radio signal petered out, as we arrived at the gates of Burning Man. We spent the rest of the weekend wondering if New Orleans would still exist when we finally left our desert party.

Barely. And of course the news had only gotten worse by then.

We visited New Orleans in 2007, with friends who had the wisdom to get married in such a fine city. People were still traumatized, of course. But the spirit of the city was there. And very few people, driving very few cars, made it a wonderful place to ride a bicycle. Also because the people on foot weren’t shy about flagging you down to give you restaurant recommendations or ask, “You get that hat at Meyer’s?” (Peter’s hat, alas–not mine.) I wrote this then.

All a lot of preamble to say: read fellow Lonely Planet writer Adam Karlin’s essay in World Hum, “Yeah You Right: A New Orleans Manifesto.”

That should then spark your appetite for something a little meatier, and you should run to a bookstore and get Dan Baum’s Nine Lives. Dan (I can call him that, because I admit, I am friends with him and his razor-sharp editor of a wife, Meg Knox) has an excellent ear for New Orleans linguistic detail, and tells a beautiful story. The book isn’t so much about Katrina–it doesn’t get to that till near the end of the book–as about what makes the city so remarkable and resilient.

Even if you don’t buy the book this instant (though you should), click over to the Amazon page and look at his author photo. Yes, he got that hat at Meyer’s!

And for more on the flood itself, watch Trouble the Water. I was lucky enough to see this with the directors in attendance, along with the woman who shot so much of the footage on her video camera during the flood. And her boyfriend. And her baby. It’s gripping, and even though it documents a shocking failure and tragedy, has an amazingly positive outlook.

And perhaps after all that, you should buy yourself a plane ticket, especially if you’ve never been. And eat a po’ boy at Parkway for me.