Louisiana Books

Being an amature historian, a resident of New Orleans for 15 years now, and interested in the City's roots, I found this book to be probably the best on the subject I've read thus far. First of all, the book delivers exactly what it claims to on the cover. I've read skimpier and more salatious books on Storyville, none of the caliber and detail that this book offers.

I've made several tours to the site of Storyville and have found the directions in the book to be valuable and intensifyed my tour experience. The excellant photographs were most helpful.

This volume could be the all-time official history of that legendary Red Light District of New Orleans. It is exhaustively researched and illustrated including interviews with some of the surviving colorful characters that inhabited the "Camelot of Sin" that was Storyville. The den of sin takes its name from Alderman Sidney Story who originated the ordinance that provided for a restricted Red Light District. Ironically, he hated having his good name attached to a Red Light District. Today it's the only way his name is remembered. Prior to his legal restrictions the brothels and parlors were spreading throughout New Orleans like a cancer.
Rose illustrated his book with photos, maps, directories, flyers, police reports, legal decisions, cartoons, business cards and almost any other surviving evidence of the now torn down section of the city. The author's research was exhaustive and probably as complete as can be contained in a single book. He combined aerial photos and maps of the area with close-up photos of the exterior and interiors of the many vice businesses. He shows pictures of the interior lushness of some more famous brothels, as well as the filth of some of the cribs. He uses most of the surviving photographic nude and semi-nude portraits that Ernest Bellocq made of some of the prostitutes of the district to make the architectural and interior photos of the bars, dance halls, gambling dens and brothels come to life. Rose also included quite a lot of humor in the form of stories from the time or through his selection of colorful characters to describe in detail. And they were colorful and probably wouldn't have been more colorful or interesting even if their biographies were fictionalized.
By the time the reader finishes this book he will feel like he has actually visited Storyville and walked its streets and listened to and witnessed the birth of New Orleans jazz. In fact, Rose does an excellent job of documenting that birth of Jazz and even tracing its spread to the rest of America. The reader will also have been taken step-by-step through the historical reasons that Storyville was a necessary and probably unavoidable development at that time in American history.
Storyville no longer exists. It was closed down by the U.S. Military in an attempt to keep sailors, soldiers and marines from contracting venereal diseases. After the buildings were empty they were condemned and torn down to be replaced by more desirable buildings in the classic version of urban renewal. It took the full force of the U.S. Military to destroy Storyville because New Orleans was and had always been too corrupt to accomplish the job. Almost from it's founding, the city was flooded with prostitutes and criminals (convicts) shipped from Europe to settle the colony. The riverboat traffic provided an endless supply of sex-starved customers for the fleshpots at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Like Camelot, Storyville has become a popular legend in the eyes of the population. The legend may indeed become more mythical with the passage of time. Today the very name Storyville can catch the attention of the public and because of that it is frequently used in the titles of fiction and movies.
The reader won't feel that he hasn't received a very generous return on his cost for buying this fascinating non-fiction book. The fact is as interesting as the legend.

What can I say, Al Rose was the best. I wish he was still with us.

This book reads more like a textbook than a novel, but the historical information and photos are anything but boring. There are some wild stories about what these "buiseness women" did to one another that left my mouth gaping. I had no idea prior to reading this book how districts like these thrived. This is a thourough historical account that is worth reading.

I thought the transcripts from the interviews that Mr. Rose held with the (amazingly) still living, former residents and tradespeople were outstanding. Through their words you really got an idea of what life was like and the way they thought about things. He also remained true to his subjects by capturing the dialect in the interviews.
Also, he does a great job with mapping the district using the few remaining photographs and maps of the time in conjunction with the written descriptions of each of the brothels, bars, and cribs. Some of the pictures by Ernest Bellocq that were printed in this book I hadn't seen before.
Overall it's a very good read, and a must for New Orleans history lovers.

I lived in the area when this tragic, senseless, and incredibly brutal rape & murder took place near my hometown. Friends and relatives worked the case, and the entire area mourned the loss of Faith Hathaway as the peaceful innocence and sense of safety in our rural area was forever shattered.
The wounds were re-opened when Dead Man Walking came out. It was a slap in the face of everything good and true. It was an incredibly cruel blow to Faith's family, who deserved so much better after the tragic loss of their daughter.
Thank you Mike for setting the record straight, for honoring Faith's memory.

I read the book "Forgiving The Dead Man Walking" by Debbie Morris, who was also kidnapped and raped by Robert Lee Willie and Joe Vaccaro. Debbie lived to tell the story in her own words... I highly recommend it for those of you who care about this topic.

So often today we find the victim and family of an horrific crime victimized the second time. When I read an excerpt of "Dead Man Walking" and then saw who was directing and starring in the movie version I realized that this cruelty was being visited upon the family of Faith Hathaway. I have always had my doubt about the death penalty however the writers have a very valid point about the alternative punishment: life without parole. As long as the murderer is alive there is a chance of commutation of sentence (the removal of a mandatory sentence makes an inmate eligible to be considered for parole) or an outright pardon. After researching the number of commutations allowed in the past I now realize that, with great deliberation, there still is a place for the death penalty.

This book is valuable for anyone interested in the debates about justice, but particularly for readers of Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty In The United States. I also advise reading Debbie Morris' Forgiving the Dead Man Walking: Only One Woman Can Tell the Entire Story, and the Bourgue family's Dead Family Walking: The Bourque Family Story of Dead Man Walking, both written by victims of the murderers for whom Helen Prejean was such an eloquent advocate. This is not as appealing as Dead Man Walking, not as warm and fuzzy, but it is an unflinching, indeed horrific, look at the reality of murder and vicious cruelty.

I believe that if we, as a society, release someone whom we have good reason to believe is dangerous, we are responsible for future acts of violence. Not as a responsible as we are for executing an innocent person, but still bearing a burden of guilt. What I like best about the book is that he talks about the reasons that keep me from accepting the abolition of the death penalty. Varnado points out that the arguments that are advanced against the death penalty could, with slight editing, be advanced against any punishment; at 53, I can remember when they were. Executing the murderer doesn't bring back the victim, but neither does anything else. Many of the leaders of the abolition movement, currently begging us to be content with life-without-parole (LWoP), are the same people who have been opponents of any long-term imprisonment. I don't think that we would have LWoP if we didn't have a death penalty. Given the arguments against three-time loser laws, will people who don't accept LWoP for three felonies, even if they are all violent, continue to support LWoP for a murder, however heinous? I think they'd revert to their earlier and more sincere opinions.

It's not an easy question. The legal system is simultaneously too harsh and too soft. Innocent people have been convicted. Chills go down my spine when mayors, governors, etc., announce that heads will roll if someone isn't accused within 48 hours. "Testilying", i.e., false information by the police, is apparently all too common, but the defense is no better. Obviously our legal system is not too concerned about public safety: convicts are given probation, violate it, and are simply given probation again. I hear horrifying tales of the carelessness of parole boards.

I have also come to think less of Helen Prejean, the more I know about her. I finished Dead Man Walking not convinced, but with great respect for her. As she has become more famous, and more information is available, it has become clear that she feels her cause justified lying and general carelessness with the truth. As Varnado and Debbie Morris point out, she simply accepted what Willie told her without any investigation. It was fine as his spiritual advisor to deal with the world as he saw it, but when she crossed the line into legal advocate and author, such sloppiness became irresponsible. Further, she apparently was knowingly telling a lie when she claimed Willie was remorseful. Not only did he contradict her in his own interview, but Debbie Morris told us that she admitted that she didn't think he was capable of remorse. She has now written a book about people who were supposedly innocent of the crimes for which they were executed; I suppose that I will read it, but at this point, I wouldn't take her word for it. She has co-founded a program for victims, but as Varnado points out, she remains extremely insensitive to them as individuals. Her prayer condemning the participants in an execution, including the victim's parents, is a case in point. She topped this off by not considering how they would feel about appearing in her book, let alone the movie! She's great at touching apologies, but they only mean something if one tries to do better.

Readers concerned about valuing the murderer over the victims may also be interested in reading The Victim's Song by Alice Kaminsky; Yale Murder by Peter Meyer; and The Killing of Bonnie Garland: A Question of Justice by Willard Gaylin.

Victims of Dead Man Walking has been the most difficult, tear-jerking, enraging, must read I have come across. Ever. This brutal rape and murder happened not far from my home, and Faith's memory is still well within the minds and hearts of people all over our area. She was a beautiful, smart, 18 year old young lady who had the world within her reach on graduation day. But a cruel, unrelenting Robert Willie and Joseph Vaccaro, both of them boasting about a life of crime without remorse, stole Faith Hathaway away from this earth. They raped her repeatedly, stabbed her until the gaping wounds nearly severed her head, and left her to die alone in Fricke's Cave, only to be discovered 8 days later by a then 25 year old whip detective Mike Varnado. Hollywood doesn't want you to know these things. They would rather you believe that a then 24 year old "Matthew Poncelet" (a dead ringer for Robert Willie if there ever was one), who received the death penalty by electric chair, became a remorseful repentant man when he met his fate. Nothing of the sort ever occured. His partner in crime, Joseph Vaccaro, sits this day in a federal penitentiary still serving out his sentence for yet another crime, the rape and kidnapping of a "16 year old from Madisonville".

This book is so very well written it feels as though Detective Mike is speaking to you personally. He makes it easy, while terrifying, to put yourself in his shoes, countless sleepless nights after discovering Faiths swollen, nude, decomposing body in the once family oriented Fricke's Cave. You can feel the anger rise up from the pages from a very cruel young man who boasted of his murders, who never showed remorse, but loved the attention he gained from the spectacle of a nun and the television news. After the book DMW and movie of the same name, the real story of Faith Hathaway was nearly forgotten until Detective Mike brought forth the true details of the crime. One need not be pro nor con death penalty to learn valuable lessons and true facts of Faith Hathaway. After speaking with Faith's mother personally, I learned that Mrs. Harvey (Faith's mother) asked Tim Robbins (DMW director) to at least visit the area of Fricke's Cave where her daughter was left to die. Mr. Robbins response was "I don't have the time". Please - make the time for this book, the REAL story of the Victims of Dead Man Walking. These words by Detective Mike will make you a litttle wiser to the facts of this young girl, the trial that followed, and could very well give you the knowledge to save your own life one day.

I live in New Orleans, La., and lost ALL my cookbooks (and everything else) as a result of Hurricane Katrina. I purchased Cajun Cuisine and I have tried several recipes - I am very pleased with it.

It's hard to learn to cook Cajun food from a cookbook; the food traditions of the Cajuns of Southwest Louisiana have been passed down orally for 400 years, and only in the "Cajun Cuisine" craze of the late '80s-early '90s did Cajun cookbooks really start to become popular.

These recipes are stripped down to the bare basics, because that's how Cajuns do it. Cajuns don't customarily use Emeril's Essence (remember, Emeril is from Boston) or carefully measured spices. It's a dash of this, a dash of that, until it tastes right. Don't make it too spicy; you can add your hot sauce later. You will never be able to make authentic-tasting Cajun food if you follow a recipe to a T.... that's not how it's done! You also need to learn how to modify recipes to suit your tastes... if you don't like file' powder, don't add it (many Cajun cooks don't add file' to anything, some put it on the table for you to sprinkle in yourself, some use it heavily). If you don't like okra, don't use it! Again, not all Cajun cooks do (although in response to the reviewer below, when Cajuns do use okra in gumbo, it is always sliced, and it is always slimy. Some people like it that way.)

This book provides excellent framework-style recipes for you to do what you want with. If you want to add tomatoes, go ahead! No one's stopping you! If you want to pour in a half gallon of Tabasco, feel free! If that's how you like it, that's how you like it. If you want to make your roux with butter (or oil or lard or bacon grease) do it that way! It won't change anything important, the recipe will still be fine. That's the beauty of Cajun food.

In response to the other reviewer who complained about a lack of pictures, the reality is that Cajun food is not as pretty as New Orleans food, and therefore doesn't make for terribly appealing photos. Gumbo looks like brownish-gray glop, but it tastes like heaven. That's just the way it is. If they'd included pictures, the sauces piquantes, the gumbos, the stews, the fricasees and the etouffees would've all looked the same, and how much would that have really helped? Plus, the drawings that are included in lieu of pictures are really adorable.

Get this book, and don't be scared to experiment with it! That's what it's all about!

`Cajun Cuisine', published by the very local Louisiana publishing house, Beau Bayou Publishing Company, and with no clearly discernible author, may be the publishing analogue to what in the culinary world is called `rustic' or in the pharmaceutical world, `generic'. Aside from a fairly nicely composed cover photograph of all sorts of raw and prepared Louisiana victuals, there are no frills and only one `pretension', in the form of a semi-scholarly introductory essay on `Arcadian (Cajun) Cuisine' by the retired Director, School of Home Economics, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Marie Louise Comeaux Manual. While this author's credentials are `academic', her essay is not terribly scholarly, as it is poorly written. It does, however, do a decent job of adding some material to our understanding of `Cajun' cooking.

Most foodies know that there is a `Cajun' and a `Creole' cuisine, which seem to coexist in and around Louisiana, centered in New Orleans. The problem is that I suspect few food enthusiasts who have not studied the matter can make a clear statement of the difference between the two. It seems as if the classic dishes of the area such as gumbo and jambalaya, as well as a foundation in French cooking techniques are claimed by both heritages.

According to the `Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink', the two cuisines are very similar, and the main distinctions that source can make between the two is that `Creole' is an urban cuisine originating with the earliest Spanish settlers from the 17th century and that `Cajun' (from Arcadian), is a rural cuisine deriving from the French émigrés from Nova Scotia in the late 18th century, after being kicked out by the English following the French and Indian Wars (That little opening act for the American Revolution). And, while both cuisines claim gumbo and jambalaya, etouffee and its principle ingredient, crawfish, seems to be distinctly `Cajun'. A second culinary difference is the greater extent of French influence from Arcadia, a purely French colony. This influence can be seen in the fact that Cajun cooking values balanced, but varied seasoning. It's `signature' cooking technique is braising, which is straight out of the French provincial cooking playbook. This is ironic because `Cajun' cuisine is often associated with very spicy foods; however, much of this `heat' was probably added a scant 25 years ago by the famous Paul Prudhomme of New Orleans, who, I believe, virtually invented the `blackened' cooking technique, most famous with `blackened catfish'.

But getting back to this book, my initially cool impression made by the somewhat pretentious introduction was redeemed when I started looking at the recipes. All the recipes are written in a very economical style, with crisp ingredients lists and matter of fact descriptions of procedure. The writing is not the minimalist sparse writing of Elizabeth David in `A Book of Mediterranean Food', but it has few if any `trucs', tips, hints, sidebars, or other accroutremonts of modern cookbook writing. And, it has none of the scholarly observations on origins or variations also found in Ms. David's works. For an experienced cook, this may be a very good thing. It means we have `just the facts, ma'm'. So, an experieced cook can be on their way to reproducing the dishes and fill in the extras where needed. One place a modern cook will especially wish to fill in is in replacing `oleo' with either real butter or a less saturated vegetable oil. In the mid-1980's, we had not heard all the dangers of trans-fats, commonly found in common margerine (oleomargerine).

One advantage of the sparse recipe writing style is that the slim 222 page book can contain a very healthy number of recipes, probably numbering close to 250, if you include the supplementary recipes for dressings, sauces, and condiments. And, this healthy number of recipes seems to cover the full range of `Cajun' specialities. The very best thing is that those classic dishes such as gumbo, jambalaya, and etouffee are represented by several variations. From there, it goes all the way from fried oysters to boudon to beignets. I did find some famous preparations missing, such as coffee with chicory, `poor boy' sandwiches, and `mouffelata' (sic) sandwiches, but as none of these are `cooked' dishes, I'll not feel cheated.

One thing I like about a cookbook with a lot of recipes for dressings and sauces and condiments is that it adds a great source of information on which one can improvise (See Sally Schneider's new `the improvisational cook'). This book is the perfect source for making a few dishes, then striking out on your own in making `Cajun' style dishes without having to resort to Monsieur Prudhomme or Monsieur Lagasse.

The book was very nicely organized and will stand up to some serious stints in the kitchen. I was also very happy to see tables of contents with all recipes listed at the beginning of each chapter. This is something all cookbooks (other than the monster references) should have. The ony annoyance is that the recipes were not printed in the order they appeared in the table of contents. I have no clue why they were different.

But, for a very reasonable list price, we have here an excellent source of basic, authentic `Cajun' recipes with all the essentials and none of the frills.

This is a book about cajun cuisine. That is all you are getting. That may seem odd to say that since this is the name of the book but many know that cajun cookboks will often have numerous other recipes that may be creole, traditional southern, soul or classical french. Even italian. This is specificaly cajun and not southern louisiana. You get what you pay for.

Because the book operates from a narrower scope you may not have the recipes you want. No red beans and rice for example that is a creole dish. You may also notice the lack of tomatoes in many dishes that you normally think would have them. The crawfish etoufee for example has no tomatoes which is classical cajun. This etoufee is little more than butter and the trinity. You get a down to basics recipe for maque choux and i use it often. This book gives you everything you need to be a cajun cook but maybe not everthing you want.

There are many dishes here that you may have never heard of. Try the louisiana pear cake one time. A spice cake with fresh pears is all the rage now at my little restaurant here in tennessee and some of the recipes have allowed me to expand and my offerings to my customers who are not cajun. In fact cajun cake recipes are one of the real strong points of this book. There are about 10 of them compared to only 2 in prudomme's book. You get everything from that pear cake to wine cake and syrup cake. All are wonderful.

This book has helped me as a restaurant owner to become a self taught cajun chef. Everything from cajun ginger cake to vegetarian gumbo. You can't help but love this book.

Why the 4 stars? No dry spice measurements. The dry spice mix is the standard of paul prudomme's recipes but all this book gives you is is cayenne, salt and pepper to taste. How about telling me how much you normally use? Also unlike the prudomme book this book has no photos of the prepared food. Prudomme's book has many full color photos. No extras here just recipes. No colors or diagrams and even though the author is an expert on cajun cooking there is no significant background given about the dishes. No history, nothing to tell you where the dish comes from or how it has evolved. A book of recipes is great but we all can find dozens of recipes for almost anything online. I'm looking for more than that.

Note that almost none of these recipes makes use of justin wilson's standard flavorings. Wilson uses bitters in about 1/3 of all his savory dishes and worcestershire sauce is used in about 2/3 and all have hot sauce. These ingrediants are rare in this book. In fact i can't think of one recipe that uses bitters.

If you are looking for a solid collection of authentic cajun dishes this is it. They work. But if you want a more complete south louisiana work paul prudomme's book is superior for the same price.

Gelbart isn't a Cajun name, so please pay no attention to her review. Me (a Cajun with a Cajun name - LeJeune), my Cajun friends, my Cajun family, and Cajun and African American and Cajun cooks I have known in Louisiana have always cooked with cut okra, and the end product is not slimy or gooey. And just because Emeril and Paul Prudhomme are chefs doesn't mean that they know how to cook EVERYTHING. Not to mention that I have never met anyone in Cajun Country who made a roux with butter - lard maybe! - but not butter. Trust the creators of the recipes! The food speaks for them!

Terry Thompson-Anderson's newest edition of Cajun-Creole Cooking was a
pleasant surprise. It is the fourth time I have purchased her book (because friends didn't return them) and this update is even better. Terry was a consultant when we opened the original Cajun-Creole restaurant
Cafe Nola in Philadelphia. Her recipes won us a following that kept us in
business for 16 years. I used her latest book for the Mardi Gras celebration at our even longer-running Copabanana which has been doing Tex-Mex for 30 years. I look forward to her newest "Texas on a Plate" for refining my Texas recipes at Copa. My kitchen staff was wowed by the depth of flavors her recipes produce.

This is a wonderful book, filled with tasty, authentic recipes and history. The New Orleans French Loaves are the easiest, tastiest bread I've ever made. This book is a treasure.

No other Cajun recipe book compares to this one. I wanted Grandma's recipes, and now I have 'em! The Jambalaya and Fricassee recipe's are famous at my house.

My girlfriend gave me this book when we started dating. It was the first cookbook I ever owned, I had no idea what a gem it was. Since then my mother gave me all her Cajun-Creole books (about 25 in all), books signed by Emeril and Paul Prudhomme, none compare, this is without a doubt my favorite.

Everyone lays claim to 'authentic' Cajun-Creole recipes, recipes need to have this ingredient or that or else they're not Cajun-Creole. If there were such a standard (there isn't), then this book would have to serve as the measure.

My wife often suggests that giving me this book helped convince me to marry her ;-)

I not only recommend this book, I have bought it-- TWICE!

I owned an earlier version of this book and used the recipes in it as the basis for my parties while in the Navy. I have a few of my mother's recipes but this book is the basis for all of my friends thinking that I am an outstanding cook. Instead, I was a thirty-something bachelor who can read and follow directions. This book is that good.

The recipes are absolutely delicious and after Hurricane Katrina hit I ordered a new copy of this- PRONTO!

My only complaint about the book is that occasionally the recipes assume you know the basics. Maybe most people know that you have to soak dried beans before cooking them but I didn't and so my first attempt at Red Beans and Rice was a disaster. But most of you aren't going to be such amateurs in the kitchen as I was when I did that. I look forward to reading the latest version just to see if those oversights were eliminated.

Aside from that, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. I read the reviewer who said he had a separate copy in a safe deposit box. Good Idea!

Enjoyed reading this book. I had family who survived Camille in Nelson County, spent several weeks there during the summers visiting during my youth and remember vividly going there as soon as we were allowed in to see the damage. This book did an excellent job describing the storm, the aftermath and how it changed the lives of so many people who lived in that area.

I am not usually a nonfiction reader, but a friend strongly recommended I read this book. She was right--it really does read like a novel. The authors tell the stories of Camille survivors in such a compelling way that I found I couldn't put it down. They seamlessly weave in the science of hurricanes and the political and cultural environments of the time. I was hooked from the very first page and wasn't ready for it to end. Howard and Zebrowski are master storytellers.

What a wonderful read Category 5 was. I am a voracious reader, but, unfortunately, a slow one (and people say God doesn't have a sense of humor), but I picked up a hardback copy of of Category 5 two days ago and finished it 5am this morning--I couldn't put it down. I love how the authors wove the stories of the people in with the unfolding science. In particular, I had a lump in my throat when I read how Luke Petrovich went to his grave still thinking he hadn't done enough. He seemed like a fine man, and a remarkable one, considering how he crawled out from under the mental and emotional and psychological clutches of the "Judge". I live right here in central Virginia (Greene County, just north of Charlottesville), and I have a friend in Nelson County, so I've been passing to and through that county for years, and I had always heard about the horrible events wrought when Camille came to visit that August night, but this narrative brought it alive and made it all real. Also, I have to admit, I never truly before understood what all the ire and lingering mistrust was about on the part of African Americans, but the discussions of the pervasive and unrelenting bigotry of the time and place opened my eyes--I'd be angry, too, to this day if I and people like me, simply because of the color of our skins, had endured THAT degree of hatred. More than once while I was reading, I had to put the book down and just breathe a long, "My God!" I wonnder if the authors have thought about selling the movie rights to Category 5. Many times while I was reading, I thought about what a great movie this book would make--heck, the part about the "Judge" alone would make for great viewing!--what a despicable, yet multifaceted and multilayered man! Look at what Petersen and company did with The Perfect Storm--a movie from Category 5 would be ten times better (if it copied the quality of the book, that is). I recommend this book highly for a thought-provoking, eye-opening, page-turning read.

The authors of this book were putting the finishing touches on it when Katrina made landfall in generally the same area as Camille. They went back and added a chapter but for the most part the book was left to stand on its own in light of the more recent disaster and it stood up quite well. All through the book there are obvious parallels between the two storms and especially the response that came in their aftermath. It is to be hoped that government officials took the lessons of Katrina to heart in a much more effective way than they did the lessons of Camille and that when the next major hurricane devastates a costal area the outside response will be far more effective.

One of the few things that did improve in the years between the hurricanes was the ability of forecasters to predict the track of the storm and to get the word out. In 1969 radar tracking and computer models were in their infancy and up until shortly before landfall forecasters were sure that Camille would strike Florida. Once they did realize that it was headed for Mississippi they had trouble getting the word out and had it not been for the foresight of local officials the death toll would have been much higher. These authors take the meteorological aspects of this story and present them in a remarkably easy to understand way and do so to the extent that the reader will almost be able to feel the angst of forecasters as they try to figure out just what Camille is up to. These Hurricane Center people are remarkable.

These authors do an excellent job of relating how local authorities had taken to heart the lessons learned from hurricane Audrey in 1957 and the precautions that they had taken because of those lessons. It is not hard to see in this narrative that state and federal authorities were far behind the local authorities in preparedness for Camille and that the same was true all those years later when Katrina came ashore. This is not however just a story about the failure of government though, it is also very much a story of the people who were the victims of this great storm. This is a story of the heroism of and resilience of people who were hit with the worst that nature has to offer.

These authors do a marvelous job of relating the stories of individuals and families who were in the path of the monster Camille. Through the reminiscences of those who survived the authors tell the stories of families ripped apart and of whole families who just vanished. They tell the true story of the much publicized collapse of the Richelieu apartments in Pass Christian, they tell the story of a group of men out for a sail who end up weathering the storm near the mouth of the Mississippi as their boat breaks up around them, they tell the story of people who sought refuge in local churches only to find the large old building disintegrating around them and they tell the story of quiet communities in Virginia where the people went to bed with no warning at all that many of them would be washed away before dawn. Through it all the survivors immediately turned their attention toward helping each other once the storm had passed and these survivors, many of them wounded or in mourning themselves immediately began rescue efforts that saved untold numbers of people. It is the heart and soul of these people that is the true story to be found in this book and these authors have truly done these people justice in this highly readable account of one of the great disasters in American history.

Once you pick this book up, you won't want to put it down until you've read the very last page and the dust cover notes as well. As a reader all too familiar with the wrath and destruction of hurricanes, I found the historical facts eerily accurate and the human drama so tense that the reader is drawn into the story as if sucked into the vortex of the storm itself. Category 5 is gripping and powerful like a well-written novel and not the true account of devastation and suffering that it is -- without the dry, clinical approach of a mere assessment of storm damage. The human element is often invisible when looking at the overall picture. Howard and Zebrowski take us to ground zero to examine the personal lives of those affected and no reader can ever put those images out of his or her mind. Excellent read!

Tom Aswell
Baton Rouge, LA.

Product was used but in good condition. Description was helpful and accuraate. Mailed at a reasonable timeframe and rate.

I'll keep this short - READ this book. Well written, scarey as heck and true ! A must-read for true crime buffs.

Stephanie Stanley was a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans in 2002. She proves to be a talented true crime author with this book.

There is a common theme with some serial killers-an abusive petty criminal breaks the law with impunity and recieves little or no punishment. As a child nothing is his fault. Derrick Todd Lee shares that theme with Kenneth McDuff.

The investigations into the multiple murders that Lee committed were hampered by two factors. First,the usual routine of looking at those closest to the victims as suspects. Husbands and boyfriends. Next was the F.B.I.'s profile that suggested a white male was the serial killer. The author spotlights the pain and disappointment of victims' families as well as some members in law enforcement that believe Lee could have been investigated 5 years earlier, sparing lives of latter victims.

Another problem in the investigations was the fact that he killed in multiple jurisdictions, crossed racial lines in selecting victims,and used different means of killing. A versatile murderer. It took time for authorities to link up the crimes.

As with many cases, DNA evidence was crucial in eventually connecting Derrick Lee to 6 victims. The author explains some of the process without getting too technical.

"An Invisible Man.." is one of the better,recent true crime books that I have read. I recommend it.

This is a must read if you like to be scared and love true crime. I read a lot of true crime but must say this book really got me scared. Reading it late at night, I double, triple checked all the locks before I went to bed! This story of a serial murderer who gets into women's houses in nice neighborhoods to brutally murder them, is frightening and terrifying.

I read loads of true crime, and this one is very well written and is a good story. I wasn't familiar with this case and I like to learn the details of a case as I go along, and that is the way this is written. Some true crimes give the ending away in a preface, or a first chapter which I do not like. This is very a very intersting case of a serial killer, and I can only imagine the horror this man inflicted, seemingly for his own satisfaction. Well, I guess that is the definition of a serial killer/psychopath/sociopath. Call him what you will, he is an awful man and belongs where he is! Held my interest from first page to last page. Hopefully Stephanie A. Stanley has written other books ..... I keep up-to-date on new true crime books through the search button at Amazon, and always read the reader reviews, if there are any. This book had good reviews, and they were right on. Thanks to all the readers who review at Amazon!

A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN AND OTHER NEW ORLEANS COMEDIES is a sterling book of magnificent poetic plays. I got the books after seeing a number of O'Neill's plays and readings. So mesmerized was I by the characters that I attended the same plays several times and wanted to have the texts to study the intricate characters and poetry. O'Neill's fascinating characters sweep us to contemporary New Orleans with all the mystery and grandeur that city provides. EXPOSITION BLVD. AND A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN offer tour de force roles and insights on that troubled city in all its roaring decay and delight. SENSATIONAL READS!

A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN AND OTHER NEW ORLEANS COMEDIES is full of grace and charm in the Oscar Wilde fashion. Deeply rooted in New Orleans culture, the plays sing with humor and nobility. We see the fallen but somehow driven characters of the French Quarter vying for control and the austere family members or EXPOSITION BOULEVARD using tradition and wealth to vie for art, sex, and fame. O'Neill makes us see what in art as in life is ironic and outrageous. Her characters flower in their tropical environment seeming to flourish in complexity. The dramatic situations ripe with tension, create humor and interest at its dramatic best. I was spell bound. How fortunate to remember pre-Katrina New Orleans as she was. This anthology is a demonstration to skeptical Americans of the literary importance of Southern writers in the wake of Tennessee Williams.

Fantastic Love Stories! A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN AND OTHER COMEDIES is a superb anthologies. A concoction of romantic delights on my favorite of old cities New Orleans. The play SOLITAIRE, my favorite has an arresting story line luring us to a palatial mansion on the Gulf Coast where family squabbles seeped in decadence and mystery abound. Family members jockey for control of the estate of matriarch Irene Dubonnet. All the plays reveal a deep sensitivity to artists. Characters yearn to be inhabited in O'Neill's doomed and resonant South. The quality of O'Neill craftsmanship is impeccable and reveals the hand of a skilled dramatist. A collection of rare and unique pre-Katrina plays of a culture irrevocable lost and also found.

A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN AND OTHER NEW ORLEANS COMEDIES kept me laughing from start to finfish. WISHING ACES a comedy set in a hurricane thrusts the
reader into the bayous around new Orleans where snakes and alligators and weird occasions abound. A LOUISIANA GENTLEMAN is a marvelous love story of a young doctor and the women who pursue him--all set in the legendary Pontalba Apartments. Expostion Boulevard takes us to a mansion overlooking Audubon Park. The anthology is packed with nostalgia, humor, and romance. I couldn't put it down.

The plays of Rosary O'Neill have the best of that American literature of the South has to offer: passion, eccentricity, wit, intelligence, and humanity. Comparisons to Tennessee Williams great dramas are inevitable, as Dr. O'Neill made her home in New Orleans and founded Southern Rep. Her background in acting & directing are evident in her dramaturgy: these plays are ready to be performed! If you're an actor, you will probably chomp at the bit to play one of these flamboyant, complicated, charismatic characters. If you are a director, your imagination will be fired by the possibilities of recreating these plays from Lousiana life. This first volume of her works centers largely on plays set in or around New Orleans, this 'Paris of the South', with its unique collection of mountebanks, poets, pining lovers and crushed idealists. Hopefully the publication of this volume will encourage more people to perform her works in the immediate future.

If you are interested in developing new skills in how to do the relationship dance, this is the book for you. Fearless Loving is a must read. It doesn't matter whether you're currently in relationship, whether you would like to be in a relationship, married, single, recently split up, or divorced. Rhonda has a talent for bringing together concepts and distilling them into bit size, chewable skills for taking action, which most any one of us can implement, given our commitment.

This book is a valuable tool for me, personally and for my sixteen year marriage/partnership. I'm finding new ways to really listen, communicate, to set boundaries, to clarify perceptions, to honor my feelings and to play.

Fearless Loving also offers an insightful and helpful protocol for people who are interested in a new way to date. I highly recommend this book to my friends and anyone interested in Love.

Rhonda Britten just gets it. This book is so wonderful. She can guide you along your path to loving in a way you never thought you could, but always wanted to. The most poignant truth for me is that everyone is innocent. That's so hard to think and act on, but she's so right about it. I would have everyone believe me innocent until proven guily, so it only seems fair for me to believe that about everyone else. This book will help you with understanding any type of love and how to do it best! She never coaches you to be someone you're not, and even highly discourages behaving as if you were playing a game. She teaches you how to test your prospective partner, or current partner so you can hear what they're not saying (which is more insightful than what they are saying). Rhonda will fill you full of courage and you will feel that you can love confidently without ever sacrificing who you are, or ever compromising what you need from a loving relationship.

Fearless Loving is well-written and packed full of useful tools that if followed will send you on your way to building new love relationships, enhancing the one's you already have and uncovering and discovering the ways in which we block or deny ourselves love. The author jumps into the trenches with you as she reveals her own personal experiences. This approach made it feel real and tangible. The best self-help book I've read in a long time!!

If you've ever been through divorce -- if you've ever had a failed relationship and aren't quite sure why things couldn't have worked out better -- if you're tired of playing relationship roulette -- READ THIS BOOK!! It's the guidebook for finding and keeping love that you've been looking for. And don't forget to read Fearless Living, too! It's your ticket to freedom and to the real YOU!

ok, i only first heard of Rhonda by watching the TV reality show "starting over" + then got hooked onto watching the amazing clarity with which she brought women from all walks of life to.
so my roomate bought this book to assist her from dating another jerk, and boy, is this book stellar! its not thick, not complicated, but really packs an emotional + mental punch. i have even more respect for this woman, who has been through so much + has found a way to positively help others. i've been telling all open-minded pals of mine who really do want to change any "failures" they have to read this. its really good stuff!

I grew up in New Orleans but never had the pleasure of eating at any of Susan Spicer's restaurants. How unfortunate that is! I can only imagine what that dining experience must be like now that I've been using this cookbook regularly. My husband and I cook a lot..out of Food & Wine, Cook's Illustrated, Bon Appetit. We've both been duly impressed by the meals and desserts we've prepared from Crescent City Cooking and look forward to cooking our way through the entire book. Did I mention that the book is as beautiful as the food is delicious? This is one of my favorite gift for the newly married couple. Well done!

My wife says this is the best cookbook she's used this year. And I love the pictures.

Amazing sophisticated flavors! Nobody would ever guess most of the recipes are so straightforward, taking much less time and effort than so many other cookbooks. I've never bought my mom a cookbook, and this will be the first! I can't wait until Susan Spicer publishes another book!

I received this book about three weeks ago, and have cooked almost exclusively from it since it arrived. Not one thing has disappointed. I sent my daughter a copy, since she spent most of a visit copying recipes from mine. We did the shrimp boil while she was here (delicious) with the epiphany lemon tart for dessert. Since then, my husband and I have enjoyed the shrimp with green chile cheese grits, and the Madeira mushrooms over goat cheese croutons. I've been reading it like a novel in bed at night, anxiously awaiting the next meal I can make from it. The photographs are beautiful, the writing approachable. Buy it.

I travel a lot in the USA and abroad and naturally have to eat out a lot. I think Bayona Restaurant in New Orleans is the best that I have ever visited. That's Ms Spicer's flagship restaurant. She shares some of her recipes from Bayona along with other of her restaurants and some that are just "personal" I think. The recipes are generally not overwhelming to make and belive me - anything with this lady's touch is worth tasting. It's a no-brainer of a buy.

Claudia Emerson, Late Wife (Louisiana State University Press, 2005)

I've had very little patience with review-writing for the past six weeks or so, and thus I let this review go unconscionably long (I finished the book on April 30th and am writing this on June 10th). Thus, I've forgotten most of the phrases I was turning over in my mind. I do know, however, they all involved heaping a great deal of praise on Late Wife, Claudia Emerson's most recent book and the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I often find myself wondering what the judges were thinking giving the prize to book X instead of book Y; not in this case. The details may be a little fuzzy in my head this far after the fact, but the book itself is pure gold, that much I remember. Emerson has a wonderful eye for detail and that all-too-rare quality in a poet of not letting the story get in the way of the description:

"I'd run that course/so many times I imagined myself/a goat encircling an invisible stake//of the baseball diamond's off-season/desolation, scoreboard blank before/the lightening sky." ("The Practice Cage")

That, right there, is some language, folks. This is a book you want to read. Likely to be on my ten best reads of the year list. **** ½

I read about this collection by Claudia Emerson on a list of recent Pulitzer winners, and its marital themes appealed to me, so I gave it a try. These poems seem deceptively simple upon first reading, but as I've reread and lingered over them, they have grown deep roots. There is indeed a lot going on under the surface here.

The first two sections of this slim volume offer restrained yet poignant snapshots of a marriage viewed in retrospect--domestic moments that serve as subtle metaphors for a failing relationship. For instance, Emerson describes various homes that she and her husband occupied--houses that appear sound on the surface, but that include occupants like spiders, bees, bats, and termites, suggesting a marriage that is internally unsound. "Natural History Exhibits," for example, describes the newlywed poet opening up her silverware drawer to find a coiled snake. Rather than killing it, she hesitates and eases the drawer shut, letting the snake exit the way it came, but washing "every fork, spoon, and knife" afterwards. Her misgivings and her attempt to overlook the event mirror her handling of her early marital regrets. Another recurring image involves trapped birds--an orphaned cedar waxwing, a hawk caught in a batter's cage, and, in "A Bird in the House," the poet herself as a bird... the displaced "late wife" that her ex-husband's new wife chases out.

In the collection's final section, Emerson opens a window on her current relationship--one haunted by the ghost of her beloved's deceased "late wife," yet ultimately hopeful. In "Leave No Trace," a conscientious hiking trip becomes a meaningful metaphor for the subtle footprints we can't help but leave in each others' lives, yet Emerson's eyes are fixed confidently on her companion "on the trail just ahead."

This lovely, empathic collection is well worth a careful reading.

This author knows how to capture the nuances of life that most of us can relate to. I found that I could not put this book down. I will be re-reading this approachable "story" many times.

Claudia Emerson's precise use of words to convey images and to stimulate reflection is an artform. The simplicity of the poems and their ease in reading them mask the depth that is in each. This is key to a poet's success. The ability to appeal to all audiences by conveying a clear picture, yet not giving away too much, allows for the preservation of the reader's ability to use their own imagination. Imagination is the precursor for reflection. When room is made for reflection, each poem takes on a life of their own and the experience becomes unique for each reader and a connection is made. Connection is what poetry is all about. Not only did I make strong connections with these poems, but I truly enjoyed them just for the pure pleasure of reading them. The descriptions and images were so beautifully conjured through the artistic use of words that like admiring a great painting, they encourage you to be artistic as well.

I was a student of Claudia Emerson's at Mary Washignton College, and find her ability to honest and genuine in the classroom translates in her work. I remember her discussing "Late Wife" just as her previous collection "Pinion" was released. It is exciting to see the conversations she had among her students, now present in the art. My favorite poem is her metaphoric look at the batting cage and the hawk escpaing. Perhaps, because I have run around the fields myself, or maybe, because I relate to the universality of feeling like exhibition, and desiring to be the hawk with its talons and break free. She is a wonderful poet, and I look forward to reading every word she writes.