New Orleans: Two Years Later

The Big Easy is awash in ideas -- homes that float, revitalized schools and government reform -- as it rebuilds.

Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Fausset guides you on a day in the life of his former hometown, from daybreak to closing time, with diary entries that capture the faces and voices of a battered city that lives nonetheless by the defiant credo of its Mardi Gras Indian troupes: "We won't bow down."

Two years later, recovery in the beleaguered city, such as it is, is a complex, dynamic and messy affair.