Prologue On the morning of Good Friday, April 15, 1927, Seguine Allen, the chief engineer of the Mississippi Levee Board in Greenville, Mississippi, woke up to the sound of running water. Rain was lashing the tall windows of his home near the great river with such intensity that the gutters were overflowing and a small waterfall poured past his bedroom. It worried him. He was hosting a party that day, but his concern was not that the weather might keep guests away. Indeed, he knew that the heavy rain, far from decreasing attendance, would bring out all the community's men of consequence, all as anxious as he for the latest word on the river. Tributaries to the Mississippi had already overflowed from Oklahoma and Kansas in the west to Illinois and Kentucky in the east, causing dozens of deaths and threatening millions of acres of land. The Mississippi itself had been rising for weeks. It had exceeded the highest marks ever known, and was still rising. That morning's Memphis Commercial-Appeal warned: 'The roaring Mississippi river, bank and levee full from St. Louis to New Orleans, is believed to be on its mightiest rampage....All along the Mississippi considerable fear is felt over the prospects for the greatest flood in history.' Now it was raining again. Hours later, with the rain heavier yet, the men of consequence appeared at Allen's door. Even LeRoy Percy appeared. No man mattered more in the Mississippi Delta, or perhaps anywhere the length of the river, than he. Sixty-seven years old, still imperious, thick-chested and vital, with measuring eyes, a fin-de-sicle mustache, silver hair, and frock coat, he seemed a figure from an earlier age. If so, he had been a ruler of that age, and in the Mississippi Delta he ruled even now. Not only a planter and lawyer but a former U.S. senator, an intimate of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and a director of railroads, the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, and a Federal Reserve bank, Percy's political and financial connections extended beyond Washington and New York to London and Paris. Only his closest friends addressed him by his first name. At Seguine Allen's party that afternoon it was 'Senator Percy, how are you?' and 'Senator Percy, good to see you,' and 'Senator Percy, do you think the levees will hold?' Percy began to answer, but, as if to mock anything he might say, thunder shook the house, wind rattled the windows, and the rain suddenly intensified. The party fell silent. Men and women listened, holding food and cocktails -- the Greenville elite separated themselves from hill-country Baptists by ignoring Prohibition with great show -- uneaten and unsipped in their hands. The rain pelted the roof, the windows. The sounds of the black musicians echoed hollowly, then the musicians too fell silent before the great booming cracks of thunder and pelting rain. It had rained heavily for months. Henry Waring Ball, whose social rank fell somewhere between friend and retainer of the Percys, had recorded it in his diary. On March 7 it had been 'rainy', March 8, 'pouring rain almost constantly for 24 hours', March 9, 'rain almost all night', March 12, 'after a very stormy day yesterday it began to pour in torrents about sunset, and rained very hearty until 10....[At] daylight, a steady unrelenting flood came down for four hrs. I don't believe I ever saw so much rain', March 18, 'a tremendous storm of rain, thunder and lightning last night, followed by a tearing wind all night....Today is dark, rainy and cold, with a gale blowing', March 19, 'rain all day', March 20, 'still raining hard tonight', March 21, 'Quite cold. Torrent of rain last night', March 26, 'Bad. Cold rain',...