Louisiana Books

this book was written by my grandfather. i have read little of it, but it was interesting for me. to read about what my grandfather went through was kind of cool.

The Red River Campaign has been largely overlooked since the end of the Civil War, and given its complexities, joint operations, and impact on the war, that is a surprising thing. The articles in this issue are deeply researched, well illustrated with photos and original maps, and heavily footnoted with outstanding explanatory notes. All the articles are outstanding; the overview on the naval operations is the best in print, and the essay on Colonel Beard and the Crescent regiment is deeply moving (he was killed near his home, with all the family issues involved you can imagine, all based on personal family papers). It stays with you. Overall, this is not intended as a definitive history, but instead hits on several major topics as a deep overview. It is well balanced, Union and Confederate and non-partisan. I think it is the best thing on the subject to date.

This issue of Civil War Regiments came out in 1994 as Vol. 4, No. 2, and quickly sold out. It has recently been reprinted in an expanded and revised edition with a touring the campaign article, but without the book reviews. Buy it if you can find it.

I really loved this book because the writing put me into a city which I had never stepped foot: New Orleans. (And since Hurricane Katrina has wiped out much of NOLA this book can serve as part of its rich history.) The character development is superb; I really cared about each person, from the primary to secondary characters. The detail Ms. Crain gives to her beloved New Orleans paints an eloquent picture for the reader of the rich tradition of the French Quarter, the architecture and its unique people. Bill Holcomb, the book's main character, brings vitality into what is normally a depressing subject of the human excesses of addiction and its depressing toll on those whose loved ones -- even friends -- are affected. It's my personal opinion that RRR would make a great miniseries on one of the pay channels to fully explore the depths of each character without holding back the true feelings of those around them due of FCC censorship.

When Americans think about war refugees, we typically think of people made homeless due to conflicts fought on foreign soil. We tend to forget about the thousands of southerners driven from their homes during the War Between the States. Mary Elizabeth Massey's "Refugee Life in the Confederacy" describes the experience of southern refugees in fascinating detail.

While diarists provide wonderful detail about their individual lives, and to a certain extent, the lives of others they encountered, Massey's book creates a comprehensive "big picture." Massey makes a key point that one cannot rely on the experiences one or two persons to generalize about the typical refugee experience. "[T]here was no `average' refugee. A person's financial situation, personal contacts, place of refugee, ingenuity, adjustability to changing conditions, and his good fortune or lack of it combined to make each refugee's circumstances distinctive," she notes.

For instance, the ability to find continue one's chosen field of work in a new locale varied greatly depending on profession: Teachers often could make a planned departure to a new school while college professors more often found themselves out of work as their institutions closed. Doctors and herbalists were in high demand wherever they went while lawyers had to resort to a different line of work unless they managed to transport their law library. Some journalists, often targeted by Union forces for publicly airing their views, managed to continue printing from new sites.

Massey's work, originally published in 1964, relies on a wide variety of diaries, letters and other first-hand accounts. She addresses refugee conditions in all the states of the Confederacy, not just the ones that typically receive the most attention due to more famous battles occurring on their soil. She does not discuss refugees in Maryland and Pennsylvania who fled during the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg, but does briefly mention pro-Union refugees who left home due to conflicts with neighbors over their allegiance.

Throughout the book, her writing style remains interesting and somewhat dramatic. Massey interweaves a broad variety of first-hand accounts into her analysis, adding further interest to her topic. Period illustrations from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly further dramatize the plight of the displaced.

"Refugee Life" begins with a brief overview of the some major events in the war that led persons to leave their homes, either temporarily or for the duration. Massey then turns to factors that led persons to decide to become refugees: scare stories about what the Union Army would do, letters from husbands and sons at war urging their wives and mothers to move to a safer place, newspaper editorials, avoiding conscription, becoming stranded after a visit to a military camp, and the desire to protect men of fighting age, including soldiers on leave, as Union forces drew near.

She argues that elite classes were more likely to become refugees than the poor for several reasons: 1) their political involvement would make them targets for Union retribution-and less willing to take the loyalty oath; 2) they more easily could afford to uproot; and 3) they had broader social contacts upon which they could draw. She notes, however, that refugeeing become a great social leveler. "After the first months it was difficult to distinguish between the classes and backgrounds of those displaced," she writes.

When civilians could make a planned departure, they might take wagons full of furniture with them, assuming they had the means to transport such a massive amount of belongings. Among the possessions that Massey describes being transported by refugees were pianos, kitchen stoves, livestock and pets, as well as other cherished furniture and household goods.

The chapters on deciding where to stay and what kind of accommodations and amenities might be available are fascinating. Massey analyzes the benefits of refugeeing to a city versus the country or a small village. She also describes the conflicts that arose when refugees stayed with extended family or had to deal with unhappy landlords. In an era where state loyalty ran high, refugees often were reluctant to leave their home states, even if few safe havens remained there, she says. As for the actual accommodations, Massey concludes that most refugees did not find what they were looking for, although different people tended to look for different things. Due to food shortages, as the war progressed, a room rarely included board. Cooking in one's room became common.

While refugees preferred a solid roof over their heads, even if that meant living in a carriage house, slave quarter or makeshift log cabin, Massey provides several examples of when refugees resided in tents, including tent cities around Petersburg, Atlanta and Fredericksburg. Tents might be constructed of blankets, quilts, and rugs.

Given the patriotic fervor of supporting the troops and making do during the blockade, one might assume that society was understanding of refugees. Not so, according to Massey. Newcomers did not receive a warm welcome, even at church, where they were asked to sit in the balcony rather than in the pews occupied by regular parishioners. Their children tended to be treated as outcasts at school. Until late in the war, fundraising efforts focused on aiding soldiers, not refugees. Massey concludes by describing the military policies of the North and South toward refugees, and efforts that ultimately were set up to provide aid.

The one drawback to "Refugee Life" is its organization. The topics of chapters are not readily available from their titles, which are quotes pulled from period documents. Fortunately, "Refugee Life" is well indexed, otherwise trying to find the section where daily life or treatment of border-state refugees was discussed would be quite time consuming. Another slight weakness in the organization is a certain amount of repetition. For instance, the chapter dealing with work opportunities goes over, albeit in greater detail, information already discussed in an earlier chapter on class distinctions.

This book is an accurate portrayal of N.O. Jazz Funerals. It is a must- read for anyone who has ever seen a tradtional Jazz Funeral, anyone who has ever read about them or anyone who plans a visit to New Orleans. Photographer Leo Touchet captures the emotions of all aspects of the Funeral, in his subjects' faces and body language. One feels "present" and "on the scene" at the various moments of the Funeral. The text is truly a love poem to New Orleans heritage. Even all of the writers' statements add to the beauty of this book. This book is a must-have for lovers of photography! And what a team! Great Photographer, Touchet; Great Playwrite, Bagneris, and Great Musician: Marsellis. Who could ask for anything more!!

The history of early activists who connected civil rights and labor rights is a compelling story. This book offers the reader an extremely personal view of the struggle of an early civil rights leader who made the connection between fair labor practices and basic human rights. The story is told through the voice of Mr. Clark who made incredible sacrifices to bring to the forefront the exploitation of sharecroppers and tenant farmers in rural Louisiana. His story awakens the reader to the conditions of the poor in Louisiana and asserts the rights of African-Americans as they struggled to make a living in the rural south prior to the depression and during the Roosevelt New Deal Era. Mr. Clark's narrative is a story that has value to those who are interested in exploring the historical significance of labor and civil rights as well as for those who wish to read and understand narratives of early leaders in their own words. The authors do an outstanding job of placing Mr. Clark's story in context of the historical period and provide excellent documentation to substantiate the era. For those who love history and enjoy reading about individuals who have given so much to help others overcome obstacles, this book is a must read. I highly recommend this book and encourage the exploration of a truly remarkable period in our history. The relevance of the struggle to organize small farmers is particularly important as the decline of African-American farmers continues to present a blight on the history of this country. I highly applaud the editors, Davey and Clark, for bringing Mr. Clark's manuscript to a larger audience and for highlighting the book with exceptionally well documented sources that assist the reader with placing the story in its historical context. Mr. Clark's story has universal appeal and truly demonstrates the resiliency of the individual and the strength of close family relationships. This is a must read for those interested in the evolution of agrarian structures in the south, the strength of families, the development of labor, the impact of educational opportunities on groups of people, the importance of the narratives of individuals participating in historical events, and the rights of the poor. Victoria Cofield-Aber, Educator and Clinical Social Worker

I found this book of great help for my exegetical paper for my second year of Greek. The author parse every word in the NT. Gives the relation of the words to their antecedent. Also the author labels the tense of every verb. Gives what kind of case for nouns. I will highly recommend this book for people who wants to go deep in their study of the word of God. The author is conservative, from a baptist denomination. follow A. T. Robertson Grammar book.

Faith is unilaterally said to be a comfort; submission is thought to be the fruit of oppression. Faith has become an act of the torpid, it is common to hear "I take it on faith" to mean -and perhaps has always meant- "I take it without consideration", whereas submission has been relegated to a barbaric age of oppression, but what Geri Doran has done, and that rather courageously, is to return us to the wild faith of the primeval era, to the radical nature of submission, and to remind us of the true dread of religion. The fainthearted have already logged their complaints about this book and its tendency to "God-talk", but the mistake comes in thinking that faith is purely the act of the weak willed, those at wit's end, when true faith is dangerous and true gods undomesticated.

That religion is careful and easy is early and often challenged. In the second poem, where the first has set the landscape as the soul, the dimness of Israel's sight (quoting Genesis 48:10) becomes our model for faith as he calls himself a daylily nearing dusk. A daylily's breathlike glory is perfectly emblematic of man's life, here used for the recklessness of faith, for faith, says St. Paul, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" and as G. K. Chesterton understands these Christian virtues, "Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless." And this is necessary "or it is no virtue at all". Israel in the poem looks at the world and says: "Pigsty, lilyfield -what difference/ to an old man losing sight?"

The fourth poem, "Hurry the Iowa Cornfields", reminds us that faith is not a series of answers, but a pattern for finding answers, a questing. "Twice now in the declining light/ I've carried my prayer to the field." This prayer midpoem is refused, but in the silence which follows a response is made:

I come at dusk to stand in the rows

rummaging in the inadequate light
for gold silk turned to brown,
for ripeness, answering.

The answer comes out of the abundance of the earth, though it is not the sort of answer that would satisfy "the calculous of logic", as Ms. Doran elsewhere calls it. This imprecise impression is repeated in "Dusk in the Palm of the Lord" where she says: "God in the presence or absence of love./ I forget which grace is." and her prayer is repeated "Do not forget me at dusk."

This terrain is full of wilderness, darkness, and fire, but it is not resigned solipsism, as she says "we passed/ from knowing to unknowing and back" (The Cedar of Lebanon). Neither is it all tension; truth comes in epiphanies, blue plums, potatoes, and the "persuasive hue" of Madrona trees.

She speaks carelessly about her god, he is floundering, the "Dirty One", the wild, silent, and uncontrollable. As daring as she is in her belief it is no wonder, in our temerity, that we shy from this sort of faith, gravitating to beliefs that suit us, that placate us. Rather than faith we prefer the satisfaction of reason, something attainable, civilized, something devoid of any darkness -this is the noonday religion of the timid. Whenever beliefs are determined by what won't embarrass us, what speaks to our inner sensibilities, what makes us feel most proud to be us then we have fallen into the isolation of know-it-alls and numbskulls.

The book, which is divided into four sections each taking a line (sometimes tinkered with) from the final poem, has a particular movement from exploratory doubt to resolute love and submission. The book's penultimate poem "Reveal, in the Country Moonlight, Your Steadfast Means" ends with, "Trace on me the map of Your will." or consider the title "Lord, Yours Is the Hour of Conquest, Mine to Submit". Obedience so intent on revelation can hardly be called blind.

Her lines have the deliberation of a prayerbook, language that is seeking transformation. Consider the lines:

What carried us from year to year was yield,
potatoes in, potatoes out, like rowing.

Note how the lines start with rough sounds, "carried", "potatoes", and soften toward the end with "year to year was yield" and "like rowing". The next line overloads us with stresses before quieting: "Fist-sized, firm, rich tasting, and abundant-" yet the downbeat at the end is not the rest we're looking for, we are pushed beyond, thrust past the dash, moving from knowing to unknowing and back. Her lines embody her purpose and often with shimmer and surprise:

There's a chirr in the pond, the rustle
of water spangles amove with turtle;

In places she slows incrementally, like a pointillistic didact forcing us to note every single dot of color.

In each room, a woman or man
wakes to the radiant skin
of a lover, a flesh-ghost
caught in the act: sleeping
receding. Or is it just one room
one man asleep,

one wife unsettled by a moon,

In the title poem some father/farmer figure is quoted calling the weather "Predictable as an Indian". I cannot help but think that the title is a pun: resin/re-sin. Just as the weather turns so too do we turn. Belief is a difficult task and we must ever labor to try and "slough the dirt stains off."

Along with this sense of dirt and darkness there is something shockingly ordinary to Ms. Doran's handling of the Divine. What, from the heading of the second section, is the "unnameable holy" appears in the final poem as: "Most Heaven, you bring to the door/ the unnameable homely." It is a God who conspires with the window-blinds, whose love is seen "in seed potatoes planted/ with a grunt".

This is not a religion of the catechumen reciting the guarded poetry of patent answers. The irreligious typically return to the predictable, to the homogenous, to the safety of subjective feelings, but these are the poems of the man in the Gospel of Mark who said: "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" and poems that reflect Don Pedro in Much Ado when he said, "My love is thine to teach: teach it but how". Geri Doran's writing is a mixture of humility and the courage of someone hanging from a cliff: tenacity born of a desperate situation and her book is a return to the twilight, to the witching hour of faith, to a God greater than doubt.

Vandal covers the grim post-Civil War era with clarity and depth. I was drawn to his subject matter while researching an historical novel set in Louisiana and have found Rethinking Southern Violence a valuable resource.

Brad lives down the street from me, so I got to see some of these sketches as he was doing them, in a cafe in the Marigny, during the year after the storm. What struck me immediately was that the scenes he depicted--surreal images of debris and destruction in a world populated by panic-stricken, one-armed birds--was closer to the real experience of surviving Katrina than any documentary could get. The book Revacuation retains all the impulsiveness of those early sketches, and it is still the best example in print of what it means to live in New Orleans after Katrina.