Louisiana Books

This is a wonderful book full of great writing and great photos. The author has done a lot of footwork covering the subject. I tell all my Cresent City Music Loving Friends to get this book. It will be very hard for other authors to come behind this book and cover the same subject. Get this book for yourself - but don't lend it out - it won't come back.

This book gets five stars.
But Jeff really needs to get someone to copyread this text. Not to pick nits, but some words are mispelled and some teeny weeny inaccurate details might tend to take Hannusch's hard work and clear dedication to the subject matter with an unnecessary grain of salt.
Okay, enough of that. The fact is, if it weren't for what happened musically in New Orleans, we'd all very likely be listening to something else right now and not having as much fun. And if Jeff Hannusch hadn't taken the time to research and write up the history of New Orleans rhythm and blues, it might never have been done. Five stars, Jeff. Hire a copyreader for the next edition and this book will sparkle more than it does already.
-- NA

On election night, commentators usually forget to provide the context and background explaining why the south votes the way it does, making it "mysterious" to all but the pros.

This book begins by explaining the shift towards the Republican Party in the south in recent years in clear language. As much as was made of Gore's loss in his home state in 2000, this books makes clear that any democrat would likely have lost there.

The first chapter gives a regional overview and each succeeding chapter covers one state, written by a local expert. Highly recommended.

An amazing review of the status of the political situation in the American South in the 1990s. It will appeal to the lay audience, political scientists, and political professionals. In the fine tradition of V.O. Key.

This is the only book I have been able to find on Black Hawk and the Spiritual Churches of New Orleans. The author takes you on a journey into the heart of New Orleans both with text and color photographs. The author really seems to know his stuff. I have enjoyed reading this book several times, each time learning something new. The author gives details of the spiritual church movement in New Orleans and throughout the African community. We read about the incorporation of Black Hawk, a powerful Inidan warrior is venerated and worked for the benefit of all, including usual shrines to the Black Hawk spirit. Highly reccomended!

This book portrays the Indian spirit Black Hawk as known to the Spiritualist Churches in New Orleans. Black Hawk is a 19th century Midwestern Indian warrior especially dear to the heart of African-American spiritual faith in the deep South. Black Hawk's following first blossomed in New Orleans sometime around the 1920s through the work of the spiritualist Leafy Anderson. The book has biographical material about both Black Hawk and Leafy Anderson and includes interesting material about several of the spiritualists who came after her and who still keep the tradition alive. The book tells of the way Black Hawk benefits the lives of those who call on him - "He'll fight your battles." - Jason Berry is a fine, sensitive writer. The photos are great, expecially the one of Big Chief Jolly of the Wild Tchoupitoulas taken at the time of Mardi Gras in 1979.

Fred Chappell has defined himself as a quirky, original voice in American poetry over the years. His Selected Poems is no exception. He has written a prologue to the whole book and one for each section, along with an epilogue for the collection, all of which creates a loose narrative out of nearly thirty years of an astounding poet's career.

I advise any serious reader of poetry and/or southern literature to purchase this book. The poems range from erudite to earthy to witty to just plain silly. Chappell can do it all--from formal verse to experimental free verse--and he does it all masterfully. He certainly deserves his reputation (Bollingen winner, T. S. Eliot Award winner, and NC poet laureate). In fact, I think it's time someone gave him a Pulitzer or National Book Award.

Chappell's Spring Garden collection of poems is made for poets! His hilarious epigrams poke fun at himself and others. Among amazingly tender and beautifully serene poems include "Abandoned Schoolhouse at Long Branch" and "Humility." He shows his poetic genius with "Narcissus and Echo." Chappell is truly one of the geniuses of modern poetry. Own this book! It already is a classic.

"Steamboat Gothic" is a term for the style of architecture ". . . which was inspired by the floating palaces that plied the Mississippi River during its Golden Age." From the book's forward by the author. Though the tale of a riverman and his family, there is little actual river in the book. There is, however, lots of accurate "period" in the book. As you would expect from F.P.K., it is a good read.

The steamboat gambler got rich and bought a mansion in the style of steamboat gothic to take his lady-bride to live in and to keep his past hidden from her. Then he passes a great heritage and tradition on to his "grandson", Larry. Keyes at her usual top form, in story, grammar, research and form.

As we traveled along Interstate 10 between New Orleans and "Red Baton," I mused about the girders which held the highway up out of the bayous. What must travel or life in general have been like in that part of Louisianna a century or so ago.

George Washington Cable first collected these seven stories about Louisianna and published them in 1888. He calls them true stories. They are stories from times before his own from 1782 to after the Civil War. At the same time these stories are strange to Cable because life had changed so much in Louisianna between the time that the stories occurred and his own time.

The stories start with the story of Louise who came to Louisianna and almost became the dinner of a local chief. This tragic tale is quickly followed by the "bright and happy" story of Francoise and Suzanne who travel through the "wilds" of Atchafalaya. Alix's story is next. She was once introduced to Marie Antoinette. Then the French Revolution came and Alix lost her first husband. She will be a character that I long admire but I ask you to read the story to see why. Salome Muller was a German who lost most of her family enroute to Louisianna. (Some 1200 of the 1800 who attempted to make that trip never arrived.) Salome became a slave. Yet some 20 years or so later her family took her case to the State Supreme Court to free her. The
"haunted house" is the house of Madame Lalaurie who chose to save her possessions rather than her slaves when a fire burned her house. The story of Attalie Brouillard reminds me of the con men of the movie "The Sting" with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The last story is a diary of a Union woman who lived in the South during the Civil War. To these I would like to add the story of George W Cable who begins his book by telling his readers how he got these other seven stories.

These are true stories from people who lived in Creole Louisianna, a time strange to us now.

Seven unusual, true stories set in Louisiana comprise the reissue of George Washington Cable's STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. First published in 1888, these stories are a gold mine of cultural lore and historical facts. As interesting as the stories themselves are the accounts of how Cable acquired them.

"The Young Aunt with White Hair" is set in Spanish occupied Louisiana in 1782 and describes the horrors experienced by a young woman on the long journey to New Orleans from Germany: robbed by sailors on the ship; an Indian attack near the mouth of the Mississippi River, during which her husband and baby are brutally murdered; being held captive by Indians and told she was to be the chief's dinner. Her ordeal was so great that her hair turned snow white in a matter of hours, and she never recovered from the experience.

Humor and suspense make "The Two Sisters" just plain fun to read. Two teenage girls- one a tomboy and one a demure, sweet lady- undertake a dangerous trek across the Atchafalaya swamp to North Louisiana in 1795. It's not only a good story, but the details of clothing, places and people are priceless. "Plaquemine was composed of a church, two stores, as many drinking-shops, and about fifty cabins, one of which was the courthouse. Here lived a multitude of Catalans, Acadians, Negros and Indians. ..It was at Plaquemine that we bade adieu to the old Mississippi.."

The story if "Alix de Morainville" reads like a fairy tale: the birth-deformed baby farmed out to a peasant family; the arranged marriage that turns out to be a love match; the convent stay; the marriage of dear friend Madelaine to Count Louis de la Houssaye and the couple's departure for the Louisiana colony; presentation to Queen Marie Antoinette; Aleix's grand wedding at Notre Dame Cathedral; the onset of the French Revolution; widowhood; rescue; and flight first to England and then to Louisiana.

The other stories are "Salome Muller, The White Slave," "The Haunted House in Royal Street," "Attalie Brouillard," and "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South."

If you haven't read any of Susan Ludvigson's earlier books of poetry, this would make a great introduction to a wizard of words whose work moves from the mundane to the universal. Whether writing of sex and marriage, light and flight, or the terrors of modern life, Ludvigson is supple, smart and sly.

"The body is a boat gliding / down the river whose fragrance / spins us to the shady places / under apple trees / and into bedrooms" It is the subtle influences--fragrance, music, color, the sound of snow falling, and the gradations of shadow and light--that move us, body, mind, and soul, through Ludvigson's poetry and closer to ourselves: "More and more I see / how everything goes together / There is such grace in this reconciliation." These poems consider the usual fare, places and people, family, friends, and lovers, but are blessed with a kind of grace. For the author, grace is almost accidental,"--like geometry, / where right answers come through paths / we can never retrace," and the reader ends up, after daring leaps and odd connections, back where he or she began. This volume is a gift for those of us who have come to Ludvigson's poetry late, selecting work from six previous collections and throwing in 20 new pieces. Highly recommended.

4-year-old grandbaby loved this book! She adores possums and this book is full of them. It takes a long time to read because she counts all the possum brothers and sisters and studies all the other living things that are part of this lovely story. We have read this book over and over and each time it's like a visit to the bayou. The art is rich with detail. Every time we read it we see something new. She enjoys the ending where the little Tah-Tye discovers his own possum power!

At the nature center, I use this book as part of my nature education program for preschool through 1st grade children. Following the reading, the children "play opossum". We then hike a short trail where the children look for the items that the little opossum found on his walk through the swamp. The story holds the children spellbound. And, they remember all of the items and animals mentioned in the story. The illustrations are simple and easily seen by a large group. Many of the teachers have asked where they can purchase this book, but the children's reaction really speaks for itself!

This book is written as though the primitive artist Clementine Hunter is telling her story. It sounds just so! And the illustrative examples of Clementine's artwork are fitting and wonderful to see.

As a teacher of k-12 art I value this resource. Hunter's life is facinating and her story is important for kids to hear. The author writes in Hunter's voice, creating an intimate conversation. Other older sources I've found about this artist's life are presented in way that could be percieved as patronizing. Lyons presents racial issues in a direct way I really appreciated and helped me when working with students. Hunter's paintings express her life - using images with deeper interpretations than just quaint naive pictures. Her personal dignity and creative spirit are an inspiration to us all. Lyons includes a good balance of historic photos and reproduced artwork. I recomend also checking out other books by Lyons focusing on non-mainstream American artists.

 The day I learned of Richard Lowe's publication of the diary and letters of James C. Bates I ordered the book. I read Bates' diary and letters first then re-read the entire book. I was fascinated! In his letters, Bates reveals his feelings much more often than most Civil War soldiers. I have often wondered how he survived such a dreadful wound. His description of forcing a tube down his horridly damaged throat would make anyone cringe. I knew a descendant of James C. Bates had the major's Civil War papers, but I had no idea where to find that person. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of a band of brave and dedicated young men who deserve recognition. Their brigade, made up of the First Texas Legion, the Third, the Sixth, and the Ninth Texas Cavalry, is the only Texas cavalry brigade to serve east of the Mississippi. They were transferred from the TransMississippi to Corinth in April 1862 and remained in the Confederate West to the end of the war. In the Official Records they were known as the Texas Cavalry Brigade and later in the war as Ross's Cavalry Brigade. I have a special interest in the Ninth Texas Cavalry and would have paid a large ransom for Lowe's book a couple of years ago. I am elated to add it to my library. My mother remembered two uncles, Reuben and Jesse Rogers, who served with the Ninth. Her stories and a few old family records started my research on the regiment ten years ago. In January of this year Avon Books published my book about the Ninth and Ross's Brigade - All Afire to Fight - The Untold Tale of the Civil War's Ninth Texas Cavalry. See Amazon.com for description and reviews of All Afire to Fight.

In our family my great aunt was the keeper of this rare piece of glass pressed into a frame, not even as big as a deck of cards. It was the likeness of my great-great grandfather, a supposed captain in some Confederate unit, captured in an ambrotype, a primitive form of photograph. I peered at him as a child as he proudly gazed back at me from more than a century ago, his hat flamboyantly cocked, beard prominent, and pistols visible at his waist.

We never knew what the war was like for him, the details of his life blurred by a sketchy oral tradition: Didn't know what he thought about the cause in which he was engaged; what he thought about his fellow soldiers; about the Union; about his family. We didn't know why he came back home to Arkansas, so we were told, in the middle of the war, only to die. Had he been wounded or taken ill? Had he deserted, or just walked away on a long odyssey home, as Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain soldier had?

These past few days, though, have offered a vivid and authentic picture of how life must have been for my forebear. Richard Lowe, Regents Professor of History at the University of North Texas, pulled all the strands of that world together in this book.

Captain, then Major, then Lieutenant Colonel Bates' letters and diary entries, along with Lowe's invaluable geographical markers and chronological waystations, give us a true picture of the trials -- physical, mental and emotional -- that must have weighed heavily on those young men in the maelstrom of war.

Bates' own psyche tilts at the eternal and epic questions of Everyman's life and death throughout the book. In some letters, the young Bates playfully teases his future wife Mootie. In others, the darker hand of war and combat color his mind. His lightheartedness with Mootie stands out against the grisly accounts of terrible battles and revenge. In one he reports that his men "set a good many" former slaves who had gone over to the Union side "to stretching hemp," a euphemism for hanging.

As Bates' letters and diaries continue throughout the war, his own accounts of rumors brought into his camp and his joy at optimistic accounts of victories reported leave us pitying his soul, for he knows not yet of the war's inexorable grinding on the Confederacy. Lowe's ample and informative historical notes and charts force us to twist privately in our seats as we read, unable from this vantage point to even vicariously enlighten or encourage Bates in his travels and battles through the Indian Territory, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Bates would hear of nothing to dampen the spirits of the Confederate cause, evidenced by a letter to his sister, a scalding scolding, after she had written to him a particularly depressing letter. "Why all this gloom," he asks. "You permit your imagination to conjure up a thousand dangers & difficulties & causes for trouble that have no existence in reality." Then, after a tub-thumping sermon on reasons for bearing up under the strain: "Make an effort to appear cheerful at all times - and making the effort to appear so will soon really make you feel so."

Bates' optimism bears up even when he contemplates continuation of the war after the fall of Vicksburg and Atlanta.

Analyses of the deeper reasons for the conflict pepper Bates' writings, based many times on his reading of letters and papers captured from Union soldiers. Then, as if it is all a joke, he relates a story of how the belligerents, negotiating in 1861, came to terrible disagreement over which side would take Mississippi. Abraham Lincoln, who in this tale really didn't want anything to do with Mississippi, reluctantly offers to take half, then precipitating the war, since the South could not bear to have only half. Bates despised Mississippi. On his second trip there, he was obliged to admit that his Confederate troops were treated better than before, the locals having got a dose of the Yankee medicine since his last visit, a medicine which he felt had taught them to respect the presence of their own Confederate troops.

Bates' use of American slang still rings true in the ear today, with his talk of having the "blues" from time to time, but his prose is undeniably pristine and proper. His take on the ineptitude of Confederate leaders is poignant and his analysis of politics is deadly sharp.

Possibly while on a visit back home, he, like so many soldiers in other conflicts, left a code with his friend Mootie, which allowed him to pass along information to her which could have compromised the troops' mission have it been general knowledge. Lowe includes the two instances of the code in use, along with a facsimile of the actual key used in deciphering. How exciting and intimate it must have been to think of passing along privileged information along to his future partner.

Bates also follows the lead of many other soldiers, finding God, or "taking religion," after his brush with death and subsequent injury. He assures his mother that if he were to die, he would be reunited with her one day in the heavens.

The war for Bates ended with his inability to return home for a while. He spent time wandering Mississippi, in all likelihood working through events that changed him from a young innocent to a vengeful, physically shattered man.

Bates was lucky enough to have survived a minié ball wound to the mouth, and lived a productive life for some time after the war, unlike my "Captain," who died before the war was over. Even so, I, and many others who may have wondered about their forebear in their own carefully passed-along photo, now have something to go on, something that reveals the real world of a Confederate soldier, the hopes, the joys, the wrenching twists of morals and psyche.