This 1909 paper traces data on Chicago’s South Park Playgrounds to argue that the presence of parks and playgrounds in a neighborhood correlates to a decrease in the number of cases of juvenile delinquency.

ALLEN BURNS, Department of Child Hygiene, Russell Sage Foundation

Delivered before the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association in Mobile, Alabama, on February 25, 1911, this address details the rapid fundamental changes in school hygiene and children’s health in schools over the start of the twentieth century, including medical exams, dental inspections, and the rise of school nurses.

LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Based on an investigation conducted in 1911 by the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation and the superintendents of schools of twenty-nine cities, this article examines the data behind how much American cities spend on public education and what they get for their money, shedding light on the relation between school expenditures and school results.

LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.

A preliminary report of an investigation made by the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation and the superintendents of schools of twenty-nine cities in 1911, with the aim of determining the best methods of identifying and helping misfit children in the classroom.

LEONARD P. AYRES was director of the Division of Education at the Russell Sage Foundation.

A volume of the Topeka Improvement Survey, a survey of health conditions in Topeka, Kansas, in 1914, this report studies the labor conditions of the industrial trades found in Topeka, particularly the automotive industry. Published with A Public Health Survey of Topeka by Franz Schneider, Jr., Delinquency and Corrections by Zenas L. Potter, and Municipal Administration in Topeka by D. O. Decker.

ZENAS L. POTTER, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation

A volume of the Topeka Improvement Survey, a survey of health conditions in Topeka, Kansas, in 1914, this report centers on the administrative bodies of the city government, as well as the financial measures taken to fund these. Published with A Public Health Survey of Topeka by Franz Schneider, Jr., Delinquency and Corrections by Zenas L. Potter, and Industrial Conditions in Topeka by Zenas L. Potter.

D. O. DECKER was special agent of the Department of Surveys and Exhibits of the Russell Sage Foundation.

A volume of the Topeka Improvement Survey, a survey of health conditions in Topeka, Kansas, in 1914, this report examines the courts, police departments, and city and county jails. Juvenile delinquency and preventative work are explored. Published with A Public Health Survey of Topeka by Franz Schneider, Jr., Municipal Administration in Topeka by D. O. Decker, and Industrial Conditions in Topeka by Zenas L. Potter.

ZENAS L. POTTER, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation

Presented at the fifty-first congress of the American Prison Association in 1921, this pamphlet attempts to develop proper, universal plans for a detention home for women. Arguing that each prison would have specific building requirements and characteristics, the author presents several well-established canons of architecture and building which should be followed in any jail, emphasizing humane conditions and required needs. Printed with Plans for a Model Jail by R. W. Zimmerman.

MAXWELL HYDE, architect, New York

Presented at the fifty-first congress of the American Prison Association in 1921, this paper presents a practice adopted by Wisconsin at the turn of the century that involved finding employment for county jail prisoners with farmers and other employers in the immediate vicinity of the jail. Printed with How the Vermont Plan Reforms Jail Prisoners by Frank H. Tracy.

HORNELL HART, Iowa State University

“Weathering Katrina is a very thoughtful and elegantly executed monograph by a master of the craft. It is social science at its best.”

— Kai Erikson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Sociology and American Studies, Yale University

“Mark VanLandingham’s book, Weathering Katrina, tells a fascinating story of how the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East survived a major natural disaster and thrived afterward. It makes a significant contribution to the literature on disasters, community resilience, and ethnic culture.”

 —Min Zhou, professor of sociology and Asian American studies, University of California, Los Angeles

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The principal Vietnamese-American enclave was a remote, low-income area that flooded badly. Many residents arrived decades earlier as refugees from the Vietnam War and were marginally fluent in English. Yet, despite these poor odds of success, the Vietnamese made a surprisingly strong comeback in the wake of the flood. In Weathering Katrina, public health scholar Mark VanLandingham analyzes their path to recovery, and examines the extent to which culture helped them cope during this crisis.

Contrasting his longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews of Vietnamese residents with the work of other research teams, VanLandingham finds that on the principal measures of disaster recovery—housing stability, economic stability, health, and social adaptation—the Vietnamese community fared better than other communities. By Katrina’s one-year anniversary, almost 90 percent of the Vietnamese had returned to their neighborhood, higher than the rate of return for either blacks or whites. They also showed much lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than other groups. And by the second year after the flood, the employment rate for the Vietnamese had returned to its pre-Katrina level.

While some commentators initially attributed this resilience to fairly simple explanations such as strong leadership or to a set of vague cultural strengths characteristic of the Vietnamese and other “model minorities”, VanLandingham shows that in fact it was a broad set of factors that fostered their rapid recovery. Many of these factors had little to do with culture. First, these immigrants were highly selected—those who settled in New Orleans enjoyed higher human capital than those who stayed in Vietnam. Also, as a small, tightly knit community, the New Orleans Vietnamese could efficiently pass on information about job leads, business prospects, and other opportunities to one another. Finally, they had access to a number of special programs that were intended to facilitate recovery among immigrants, and enjoyed a positive social image both in New Orleans and across the U.S., which motivated many people and charities to offer the community additional resources. But culture—which VanLandingham is careful to define and delimit—was important, too. A shared history of overcoming previous challenges—and a powerful set of narratives that describe these successes; a shared set of perspectives or frames for interpreting events; and a shared sense of symbolic boundaries that distinguish them from broader society are important elements of culture that provided the Vietnamese with some strong advantages in the post-Katrina environment.

By carefully defining and disentangling the elements that enabled the swift recovery of the Vietnamese in New Orleans, Weathering Katrina enriches our understanding of this understudied immigrant community and of why some groups fare better than others after a major catastrophe like Katrina.

MARK J. VANLANDINGHAM is the Thomas C. Keller Professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.