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| New Orleans: A Cultural History (Cityscapes) | 
 enlarge | Author: Louise Mckinney
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $10.06
You Save: $14.93 (60%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (3 reviews)
Sales Rank: 498022
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0195301366
Dewey Decimal Number: 976.335
EAN: 9780195301366
ASIN: 0195301366
Publication Date: April 20, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Founded in 1718 by two French-Canadian brothers for French King Louis XIV, New Orleans grew from its roots as a Euro-Caribbean port city at the nexus of North, Central and South America. Situated at the bottom of the Mississippi River Delta, the city became "Paris on the Mississippi," the fashionable cultural capital of the American South, home to America's first opera house and birthplace of jazz. Many think of New Orleans, with its antebellum mansions, above-ground cemeteries and ghostly moss-bearded oaks as a haunted place. It is certainly the most un-American of American cities, creating its own laid-back "Big Easy" attitude from the customs of the people who founded it: French and Spanish colonists, gens de couleur libres, Northern adventurers, riverboat men, pirates, and Cajuns. From this eclectic mix of influences has evolved a distinctive Creole culture, expressed in language, architecture and cuisine. Louise McKinney explores the soul of this deeply spiritual and hedonistic place, where every year the pre-Lenten Mardi Gras bursts forth with outrageous excess.
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| Customer Reviews:
Jazz Tour of the City February 16, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a truly excellent book, however, the title for this book should have been "A Jazz Tour of New Orleans Neighborhoods." Ms. McKinney does an amazing job of guiding the reader through the many fascinating neighborhoods of the city, but in the end, this tour serves only to highlight where a visitor can find good Jazz music. Certainly, no book about New Orleans culture would be complete without a discussion of Jazz, possibly the city's most important creation. But the intense focus on this one subject comes at the expense of leaving out countless other highlights of the city's neighborhoods.
If you want to read a book about New Orleans Jazz, and where to find the best venues for it within New Orleans, then believe me, this is the book you want. But if you want a book that covers other aspects of New Orleans culture, then you may have to look elsewhere. Still, this is a wonderful and unique book (the first one I have found that explores the cultural significance of neighborhoods like the Treme, Mid-City, Carrolton, the Irish Channel, etc.), and I highly recommend it for anyone with a passion for New Orleans.
 A Broad Spectrum November 30, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a tour guide in the city, I appreciated Ms McKinney's successful efforts of covering such a broad spectrum of the city's history. I found a few inaccuracies such as Anne Rice's owning St. Alphonsus, a magnificent former church in the city. She owned St. Elizabeth's, a former orphanage; Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel and other properties.
 Lagniappe! July 31, 2006
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ms. McKinney has fashioned a marvelous chronicle of "The Big Easy," which will surely be on my side - pages laminated for my convenience - during my next scuba trip to New Orleans.
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