Ronald J. Angel is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. Holly Bell is Research Scientist at the Center for Social Work Research in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas, Austin. Julie Beausoleil is an Affiliate Research Associate with the Center for Social Work Research in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas Austin. Laura Lein is Dean and Katherine Reebel Collegiate Professor of Social Work and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

• 1. After the storm: the state, civil society, and the response to Katrina; 2. An emerging methodology for a crisis situation; 3. Life before the storm: the old community; 4. Evacuation and arrival in Austin; 5. The limited transportability of social capital; 6. NGOs and the grassroots response; 7. The state and basic welfare: housing, employment, and identification; 8. Health care and the limitations of society; 9. The new social contract: the state, civil society, and social capital.

'The authors of Community Lost provide a timely and stimulating analysis of the social costs of welfare state retrenchment. Their detailed study of Katrina survivors displaced in Austin, Texas (whose experience they plausibly argue is representative of other survivors), provides a powerful indictment of the human suffering wrought by the retrenchment of the welfare state. Likewise they show the bankruptcy and inadequacy of private, nonprofit efforts to meet human need in a disaster, despite their good intentions. In this cautionary tale, the authors also provide a glimpse of the human toll that will be produced if the current bipartisan effort to slash the last remnants of the welfare state is implemented.' John Arena, Social Service Review