Houston’s story has always been one of war waged relentlessly against water.“Houston spread like a glass of milk spilled on the wobbling table of Texan plains,” Micah Fields writes in this unique and poetic blend of reportage, history, and memoir. Developed as the commercial hub of the Texas cotton and sugarcane industries, Houston was designed for profit, not stability. Its first residents razed swamplands into submission to construct a maze of highways and suburb...

Developed as the commercial hub of the Texas cotton and sugarcane industries, Houston was designed for profit, not stability. Its first residents razed swamplands into submission to construct a maze of highways and suburbs, giving the city a sprawling, centerless energy as storms and floods rattled coastal Texas.When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in 2017, Fields set off from his home in Iowa back to the battered city of his childhood to rescue his mother. Fields tracks the devasta...