Louisiana Books

This true and gruesome account of the systematic torture and killing of a human being as a public spectacle is an outrage to humanity. This story unveils a very hidden period in American history and is a very descriptive account of racial hatred and racial control gone too far. Even though this book is very chilling tale, it is a story that needed to be published and needs to be read by everyone. This book was required reading in a crime and political order class I took when I was an undergraduate. I thought I was a well-read American history buff, but after reading this, I am fascinated that I was completely unaware of the public and sanctioned torture of Americans from the end of slavery until the civil rights movement for the first 23 years of my life. The period in American history where racial hatred was acted upon and justified is not far behind us and this documentation is an important account of terror that is not often mentioned.

And Still I Cook is a recipe collection compiled from the culinary author Leah Chase's fifty years of restaurant work and cooking experience. From Baked Cheese Grits with Jalapeno Peppers; Pan-Fried Sac-A-Lait; and Rosemary Chicken; Cabbage Casserole; and Grilled Vegetables on Whole-Wheat Buns, And Still I Cook is an outstanding cornucopia of enthusiastically recommended home-style recipes offering a very special touch of taste-tested, appetite-satisfying charm.

Pharmacist and health care advocate Dawn Hooley has documented a wildly fascinating book about her unique experience enduring viscious moments during Hurricane Katrina's assault on New Orleans. In the book, Dawn describes moments when the police gave their guns to stranded tourists and how the group knew that this was "no ordinary hurricane". She describes events that helped stranded patients in New Orleans obtain their medications from a local pharmacy, and volunteering for one of the local hospitals after asking four hospitals. In truly an "outsider" fashion, Dawn Hooley paints a new face on Katrina in a first-hand account.

Know this in advance: Angels, Anarchists & Gods is only black & white portraits without much explanation. It is a photo album of some special people in some of our lives. For us we will know these people and delight in seeing them again.

In this photo album are many of the people who expanded and kept truth and freedom and creativity and peace alive. They did this and we did this primarily in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. While some are no longer among us, the wonderful portraits are not as these folks looked then. The photos are of these great human beings in middle or late age or as they are currently. They are still beautiful. They look great and there is still much sparkle and energy.

The portraits are top notch from a photo art standpoint. Each one really brings out the subject and in some cases their world. For me, the even grater value of this publication is it's providing a photo album of key individuals that changed our lives for the better. Having this book reminds me not only of these people, but of the messages their leadership brought.

These challanges are alive and need to be met today as ever before to keep peace, freedom, brotherhood, sisterhood, truth and creativity alive. These challanges did not start nor end in the sixties and seventies. We still have much to do.

I hesitate to list some of the people in this photo album, because I could not possibly come close to listing them all. I will leave it as a very pleasent suprise for those rare folks who will buy this unique book. Enjoy.

P.S. - If by chance one purchased and enjoyed Linda McCartney's Sixties - Portrait Of An Era, then Christopher Felver's Angels, Anarchists & Gods is a must have. While few of the folks presented are musicians (as with Ms. McCartney's wonderful book) these people were very much a part of the important movements in the 50's, 60's and 70's or in some cases, at least part of the fun of those times. As Felver's book will show, these people are, in many cases, alive and well and their ideas and gifts are too.

This is book does a fantastic job of compiling a wide variety of new historical essays that look at the anti-slavery movement.
For generations historians dismissed the abolitionists as crazy or too militant, etc. In the 1960's a new generation of historians started to rethink this position. Produced long after this first wave of "neo abolitionist" historians, Anti-Slavery Reconsidered shows how far Abolition Studies has come.
Read this book alongside the 60's classic "The Anti-Slavery Vangaurd", and the contemporary classic "Prophets of Protest" (2005).

Anderson's work synthesizes the results of 30 years of cultural resource archaeological investigations conducted on the US Army's Ft. Polk installation. Located in an upland environment, Ft. Polk is off Louisiana's archaeological beaten path. However, the insights gathered from decades of work have been of immense help in understanding the history and prehistory of central and western Louisiana.

Dawson's study focuses on Louisiana during the Reconstruction period. Basically, three types of northern generals oversaw the government's role: those in favor of the views of the Radical Republicans (Sheridan, Mower, Reynolds), those opposed to those views (Hancock, Rousseau, and Augur - all Democrats), and those somewhere between the two (Emory and Buchanan). Of course, Southerners hated the likes of Sheridan and Mower (Sheridan was perhaps the most hated man in the state after Benjamin Butler). But Dawson makes it clear that some sort of northern control of governmental affairs in the state, indeed the whole South, was necessary.

The book examines the role of these agents, how they acted, and where they succeeded and failed. It was a tremendously difficult task, given the South's antipathy toward the freed blacks, the Republicans, and the army that was occupying them. There was general distaste to occupation all around; even the soldiers were uncomfortable with it, a view going back to the Mexican War when soldiers occupied parts of Mexico, something they disdained then. This was something new in America. But the Republicans had an agenda they wanted accomplished, including guarantees for the freedmen, an agenda the army found difficult to attain. Dawson writes well of these hard times. All of it ended in failure, of course, with the election of Hayes as President and subsequent troop withdrawal (part of the "deal" that got Hayes the electoral votes he needed to win), leaving only the final curtain of Jim Crow to descend on the Southern stage.

When Federico Garcia Lorca said, "The song, the picture, are only water drawn from the well of the people, and given back to them in a cup of beauty, so that in drinking, they know themselves," he envisaged works such as this: cups of beauty filled with commonplace things. You will never see the Great River in the same light again. A lush and extravagant work accomplished by one of America's premier photographers from a raft as it noodles its way from the river's source to its mouth. Along the way, you meet Willie the river hobo and the nutria, the regulars and occasionals who ply the river for fun or profit.

Suggests that O'Connor's "fiction arises from pressure and resistance" and draws "from voices both within and without herself" to test and challenge "her self-conception and her faith." Brinkmeyer acknowledges that his approach is partially based upon "the type of dialogic encounter" seen in Mikhail Bakhtin's work. Remarks that O'Connor's ability to give "free expression to her fundamentalist voice and to other voices of her self rather than monologically suppressing them is a crucial factor behind her artistic greatness."

Explores "the crucial role that the narrator plays in the dynamic of O'Connor's fiction." Discusses Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, and four stories: "Everything That Rises Must Converge," "The Artificial Nigger," "The Enduring Chill," and "The Lame Shall Enter First." Contends that "the narrator is a central figure in O'Connor's stories, and the narrator's relationship with both O'Connor and the story itself is fraught with tension." Sees the novels as displaying "an intensification of the narrator's perspective," and as having a subject matter that is openly religious and fundamentalist, resulting in "a more charged religious tone and tension." Argues that O'Connor "was pressured" by the narrator and, "as the narrator was, by the narrative, and particularly by the characters and their interactions." Notes that Bakhtin frequently discussed this dynamic and argued that "in the best fiction characters exert profound pressure on the author."

Discusses three types of O'Connor's characters: intellectuals, artists, and prophet-freaks, chosen "because they all embody aspects of O'Connor that, at their extreme, come into potential conflict with her overriding Catholic ideology." Characters discussed include: Sheppard, Rayber, Joy/Hulga Hopewell, Mrs. Hopewell, Asbury, Julian, Calhoun, Mary Elizabeth, Singleton, Old Tarwater, Lucette Carmody, Hazel Motes, The Misfit, and the grandmother.

Suggests that O'Connor had conflicting views regarding her readers, sometimes downplaying their significance while, at other times, arguing that readers "played a crucial role in artistic creation and that writers always had to be aware of, and to take account of" them. Explores these assertions and relates that because she kept her readers in mind when she wrote, O'Connor "entered into a profound interplay with aspects of herself usually suppressed by her ruling Catholicism," a process which brought her Catholic vision "under pressure and challenge."

Adapted by R. Neil Scott from: Scott, R. Neil. FLANNERY O'CONNOR: AN ANNOTATED REFERENCE GUIDE TO CRITICISM. Milledgeville, GA: Timberlane Books, 2002. TimberlaneBooks.com

Clementine Hunter, one of America's most famous self-taught artists and the first African American woman to display her work in the New Orleans Museum of Art, did not begin to paint until she was in her fifties. With little interest as a young girl in going to school, she had worked most of her life as a paid agricultural laborer on Melrose Plantation, picking cotton, gathering pecans, and doing domestic work.

Because Melrose attracted numerous artists-in-residence, Clementine was able to use left-over or donated art supplies to start painting. With her extraordinary artistic talent and ability to tell stories of plantation life through pictures, Clementine gradually started to show her art pieces in galleries and sell her work for increasing values. Sadly, the country's segregation laws prevented her from attending her own gallery exhibits during business hours, and she had to wait until after hours to see her work on display.

Art from her Heart is a superb book that gives younger readers the opportunity to learn about Clementine Hunter's important contributions to folk art and the obstacles she faced as an African American woman artist. Closely integrated into the story are important economics lessons related to farm work, human resources, and discrimination. The stunning illustrations and art-piece reproductions add a powerful dimension with which the reader can more fully appreciate Clementine's story and her talent.