Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta

Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta uses the story of mud to answer a deceptively simple question: How can a place uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise be one of the nation’s most promiscuous producers and consumers of fossil fuels? Organized around New Orleans and South Louisiana as a case study, this book examines how the unruly Mississippi River and its muddy delta shaped the people, culture, and governance of the region. It proposes a framework of “muddy thinking” to gum the wheels of extractive capitalism and pollution that have brought us to the precipice of planetary collapse. Muddy Thinking calls upon our dirty, shared histories to address urgent questions of mutual survival and care in a rapidly changing world.

“Ned Randolph urges us to pivot our attention to the profound complexity (and deep historicity) of mud. This is a brilliant book, ingeniously conceived, deftly argued, and beautifully written.” — Patrick Anderson, author of Autobiography of a Disease

“Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta describes looping patterns of multivalent extractivism, while witnessing and calling forth righteous resistance, tender coexistence, and hope amid the messy petro-delta-apocalyptic.” — Rebecca Snedeker, coauthor of Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas

“Randolph’s embrace of muddy alternatives to the capitalist and technopolitical vectors of the Anthropocene exemplifies beautifully how Energy Humanities can stay with the troubles of these times.” — Dominic Boyer, author of No More Fossils

“Mud is Randolph’s point of departure for understanding the region’s past and future—a vehicle of disruption and constraint, certainly, but also, in Randolph’s deft reading, the very condition of possibility for sustaining life amid ecological ruin.” — Valerie Hartouni, Professor Emerita, UC San Diego

NED RANDOLPH holds a PhD in Communication from the University of California, San Diego. He lives in New Orleans, where he teaches, consults, and writes about environmental and social issues facing the Gulf South.