Writing
David Richardson writes about war, bureaucracy, and the places where the two meet. He hosts the Pope of FEMA podcast, where he talks through federal disaster policy, the National Flood Insurance Program, flood maps, and what the record actually shows after he left the agency. The conversation is the same one that runs through the books: what Washington funds, what it refuses to stop, and what happens when the water comes back.
Books
Texas Flood 4 July 2025
Power, Money, Politics, History, Bureaucracy, and Tragedy
David Richardson was the senior political appointee at FEMA when the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes on the morning of July 4th, 2025. He had been sent to the agency only weeks earlier — to nurse it through hurricane season, then shrink it or shut it down.
This is his firsthand account of that night and what followed: the stalled Gulf storm over parched Hill Country limestone, the camps and towns in the floodplain, the search-and-rescue teams he cleared when headquarters would not, and the deeper argument that the real cause was not only weather, but building where the water always comes.
There is no invented plot. “History has no plot,” he writes. The theme is leadership under friction — go to the point of failure, or get out of the way.
Best Book Company · 205 pages
Publication date: September 15, 2026
War Story
A novel · Foreword by Douglas Dechert
“They were brothers—brothers from the old army.”
Major Clay Steerforth, USMC, and Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Mujeed of the Iraqi Defense Forces gamble their lives on an ideal. Separated by culture, they meet in Ramadi and Fallujah and become, against the odds, friends. Combat, chance, and the promise of love bind them. Death is already in the work.
Drawn from Richardson’s years as a Marine adviser in Anbar — and from the other war, the one at home in Washington, teaching and painting — War Story is a first novel about why men keep going back to the fight.
Permuted Press · 400 pages
Publication date: April 16, 2019