New Orleans

Disaster science specialist Ivor Van Heerden is the cofounder and deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. His new book is The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina -- the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist.

TV critic David Bianculli previews When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Spike Lee's two-part HBO documentary about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Jed Horne of the New Orleans Times-Picayune discusses his new book, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City.

On Sunday, Harry Connick Jr. will be among the nominees attending the Tony Awards. Connick received a Tony nod for best actor in a musical for his Broadway debut in the revival of The Pajama Game.

Connick has released a disc of his Broadway endeavors. The triple CD features not only recordings of the 2006 Pajama Game cast, but those from the 2001 musical he wrote, Thou Shalt Not. The latter feature duets with his Pajama Game co-star, Kelli O'Hara.

There have been several waves of pop music in New Orleans since World War II, with each one subsiding as its celebrated musicians realize they can't make a living in the city they grew up in. In 1960, another of those waves crested, and with it came a pioneering effort for racial equality. Ed Ward has the story of AFO Records: All For One.

Forced out of New Orleans after Katrina hit last year, historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Tulane University, soon returned. He helped with rescue efforts and immediately began the task of collecting oral histories of the catastrophe.

The result is his new book, The Great Deluge, which offers a multi-perspective account of the storm and its aftermath. Brinkley is the author of three other historical narratives, including Tour of Duty.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, it also disrupted the education of thousands of students. While many schools remain closed, Benjamin Franklin High School is one of the few operating charter schools in New Orleans. We talk with two teachers.

The newsroom Jim Amoss leads was widely praised for its unflinching coverage of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. In a piece one month ago, Amoss said "New Orleans has become two cities -- an enclave of survivors clustered along the Mississippi River's crescent and a vast and sprawling shadow city where the water stood, devoid of power and people."

Musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, two New Orleans natives, have been friends for years — back to the days when Connick took piano lessons from Marsalis' father, Ellis

Trumpeter Gregory Davis has been with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band since its inception in 1977. The group, known for revitalizing the New Orleans brass band sound by incorporating funk, jazz, gospel and rock, will play at the upcoming "Big Apple to the Big Easy" Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden Sept. 20, 2005.

Historian and author Douglas Brinkley teaches at Tulane University and was displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He has since returned to New Orleans and begun to document the catastrophe by gathering oral histories -- he hopes to collect as many as 20,000 -- for a book, tentatively titled The Great Deluge.

Rev. Willie Walker of Noah's Ark Church in New Orleans helped with rescue efforts.

Kevin Judice is a lieutenant in the Narcotics Division of the New Iberia, La., police department. He spent eight days rescuing people in New Orleans.

Margaret McLaughlin, director of Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital's veterinary technicians in New York City, is part of an ASPCA rescue team that is finding and treating lost animals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She talks about the plight of animals in the battered Gulf Coast states.

An investigative reporter for The New York Times, Christopher Drew has been on the ground in New Orleans and provides a firsthand account of the situation he witnessed in the Superdome and the streets of the flooded city.

Jim Amoss is editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. The newspaper's staff has been publishing online from Baton Rouge since evacuating its New Orleans offices last week. The paper has criticized the federal government's response to the hurricane and published an open letter to President Bush calling for the firing of all Federal Emergency Management Agency officials -- especially director Michael Brown.

Robert Shaler, former director forensic biology at the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, led efforts to identify remains at the World Trade Center attacks. He discusses the challenges that lie ahead for those responsible for identifying the bodies of Hurricane Katrina's victims.

Folklorist Nick Spitzer hosts American Routes, a public radio music program based in New Orleans. He left the city before Hurricane Katrina and is now in Lafayette, La. He talks about the cultural and musical history of New Orleans.

Currently in New York, Obie-winning singer and actor Vernel Bagneris recently sold his apartment in order to move to New Orleans, where he was born. He tells us what he's heard from friends and family, and what he expects for the future. The Library of Congress has described Bagneris as "a master of the American vernacular." He wrote, directed and starred in the hit shows One Mo' Time, Further Mo', Staggerlee and Jelly Roll!

Critic Milo Miles checks out the New Orleans sound via a recent recording by the Neville Brothers, Walkin' in the Shadow of Life, as well as a new Sonny Landreth CD, Grant Street.