Louisiana Books

Eloise Genest has woven historical facts into a compelling and exciting story. Her characters are vivid and believable and the actions they take give us a strong sense of the history of the era.

You'll find excitement, romance, and conspiracies galore in this tale of Eighteenth-century French Louisiana as you meet the colonists, Native Americans, and slaves who all lived under the shadow cast by the splendor of the court of Louis XV.

History buffs will get an inside look at why the French lost their struggle with England and Spain for dominance on the new continent.

I hated to see it end!

Eloise Genest has woven historical facts into a compelling and exciting story. Her characters are vivid and believable and the actions that they take give us a strong sense of the history of the era.

The story begins in 1733 at a time when the French still dominated much of North America with forts from Quebec and down along the Mississippi to New Orleans. The action ranges from Louisiana to the court of Louis XV and continues through to the fading years of the French regime in 1760.

You'll find excitement, romance, conspiracies, clandestine trysts, court intrigues, alliances, and betrayals galore in this tale of eighteenth-century French Louisiana. From Louis XV, the Marquise de Pompadour, and Richelieu to the colonists, Native Americans, and slaves who habited Louisiana, all have roles that move the story forward at a lively pace.

A must read for history buffs who will get an inside look at why the French lost their struggle with the Spanish and the English for domination over the new Continent.

It was hard to put the book down. It was even harder to see it end!

I purchased the book for my daughter and she likes it. the book is in good condition.

This is not my first Chesnutt book. Over the years I read the Marrow of Tradition, House Behind the Cedars and several of Chesnutt's short stories. PAUL MARCHAND FMS is truly a lost treasure. The introduction is extremely well done and gives an excellent explanation to new readers of this genre. All readers will get a true sense of the racial lines that exsisted in early 19th century New Orleans and how some of these same feelings exist today. If you have not been a reader of Chesnutt, this is a good place to start. I'm sure that you will come to love his writings just as I have. As a native of Cleveland, Ohio, I'm proud to remind all readers that Chesnutt spent most of his live in Cleveland and is buried in Cleveland's historic Lakeview Cemetery.

As stated on the inside jacket, the book dates back nearly 100 years; started in 1900. The information and idiosyncracies of the local dialect are treasures alone. The recipes' collection is unrivaled. Must reading for any cuisine historian.

And hysterical if you're reading how to skin the squirrel before you cook it! A fantastic book with authentic Louisiana recipes originally published in 1947. Adapt those recipes that call for cooking on the hearth or for large quantities -- the jumbalaya would feed an army. Great food history as well as great food.

Janie's book transported me into a different generation. Her clarity of memory and gift of description helped me envision her day-to-day life, and that of those around her.

This should be required reading for school, and will be for my homeschoolers. Janie lived in a time without our modern conveniences, however, by the time I finished the book, I was sure she had the best of childhoods.

A book that will take you back to the times of youth and rekindle the images that were buried with childhood. A facinating glimpse into the life and times of growing up in rural America and of "roots" from which we all spring. I truly enjoyed its comingling of the reality of growing ups happy tales and sad tales and the images they brought to my own mind about my youth.

Well worth the price - especially considering the welcome suprise on opening which was a copy signed by the author!

...until now. GORGEOUS, compelling...the story of the poems pulls you in..each poem itself pulls you in....Claudia Emerson is a magnificent poet - beautiful, haunting, compelling. Intelligent...I will search for her first book and eagerly await more.

One of the most beautiful works of poetry I have ever read. I'd start with the word "haunting" to describe it, but that's starting to become cliche with Ms. Emerson's work, as it seems to strike a chord of memory about places and people that her readers have not known before. "A Bird in the House" and "Admirer" were particularly stirring for me, perhaps because I had the fortune to be able to hear Ms. Emerson read those poems before the book was published. She is a gifted writer and teacher, and I look forward to reading the next set of poems she writes.

This is the sort of book which can speak to ten-year-olds of the things that matter most to them: blood, honor, fear, group cohesion. For all the carefully bowdlerized children's books they fed us at school, this is the one that was engraved on our minds, telling us how the higher life could be lived.

My friend has just written me about this book. I LOVED it as a 10 year old--and I loved it when I reread it a year or so after I was 40. And I plan now to buy it for my grand daughter. This is a fun and informative book. I wish more young kid books were like this.

Unquestionably the best commentary on Plato I have read as yet. No ideology, no radical interpretations of Plato, just extraordinarily insightful and incisive. The essential secondary reference in studies of Platonic political philosophy.

Oxford Don, Raghavan Iyer noted that the world is a fortunate place when there are two people alive -- at the same time -- who understand Plato. Eric Voegelin was clearly one of those people in the twentieth century. This material was originally published in Volume 3 of Order and History, the core of the magnus opus that Voegelin chose to publish during his life time.

I met Eric Voegelin once as a graduate student, and asked him, "why'd you publish all this stuff?" I've been digesting his answer ever since. It was "to resist totality and totalitarianism."

Particularly, seen from this standpoint, a clear core of this book is his articulation of the Platonic concept of "metaxy," or the in-between character of life. In philosophical terms, this refers most directly and fully to "in-between" the Agathon (e.g., see myth of the cave and the Divided Line in the Republic) and the apeiron (explored most directly and deeply in the Timaeus). For the philosophically uninitiated, it is possible to speak of this in more mundane terms.

An unstated corollary of Plato's notion of the "metaxy" is that life is always larger than our categories. From a Socratic/Platonic perspective, this may include but will entail more than the epistemological recognition that every way of seeing is a way of not seeing. The notion of the "metaxy" is most fundamentally a linguistic indice pointing to ontological plenty as the ground of life, albeit lived within bounds of existential scarcity. This is a notion commonly shared by the great civilizations of East and West. The notion of the "metaxy" underscores that life is lived within a tension between the "transcendent" and "immanent" dimensions of being.

When we lose track of this tension, as we have to a great extent in the modern world, and subscribe to reductive ideological notions/understandings of life -- and most particularly, when we imagine that we can encapsulate life within the pride of our own "enlightened" categories -- on a political plane, there may be little to constrain the prideful actions of ideologies, irrespective of whether their clothing is Red or Black, or whether it is "left" or "right." Irrespective of the political stripe, repression and murder become "justified" in the pursuit of an ideological aim -- which in Voegelin's philosophical terms is to dissolve the "metaxy" in the usual modernist mode, through immanetizing the transcendent "eschaton."

Voegelin's philosophical terms may sound remarkably abstract to the modern ear (recall Robert Dahl's silly review of Voegelin's The New Science of Politics for the American Political Science journal). Facile critiques such as Dahl's typically focus on the unfamiliar language while overlooking the elementary fact that what Voegelin is asking us to do in every aspect of his work is to take a journey that precisely allows us to see the world in terms other than that of our inherited climate of opinion. For those willing to be thorough scholars rather than merely play at it within the context of given suppositions, Voegelin's scholarship offers new vistas and incredibly rich fields of study. His scholarship offers the capacity to reflect upon and act in the world in a substantively grounded mode with implications for every discipline (see e.g., A.G. Ramos' New Science of Organizations).

I submit that a key to understanding this text and the greater body of his work at large is to grasp the central significance of the "metaxy" -- not as a concept within the history of ideas -- but as a life referent of perennial relevance to the recurring challenge of resisting sophistic pretensions and the inherited or emergent ideologies of any time and place.

This text demands a good deal. You'll develop insights into Plato available no where else. But for Voegelin, such studies were never a matter of antiquarian interest. They were a matter of developing meaningful referents for life. The value in this text is precisely in its yield, capable of resonating throughout your life and offering far more than the initial effort it will require of you.

Glenn Tinder's The Political Meaning of Christianity is what Reinhold Niebuhr might have written fifty years after The Nature and Destiny of Man (sic). Tinder gives us an astute analyis of the human condition, individually and socially, exalted through the destiny God gives us, and fallen through the exaltation we give ourselves. His chapters on "prophetic hope" as it works for social transformation and spirituality have little rival in current literature. This book, now sadly out of print, should be required reading for all theology students, no matter the degree of their specialization or education. John W. Riggs

Glen Tinder is probably best known for his seminal Atlantic article"Can We be Good Without God?". The Political Meaning of Christianityexplores many of these same ideas in greater detail, examining, for example, the importance of Love in the political system (a novel idea.) I strongly recommend this book for both Christians and non-Christians wrestling with the importance of the transcendant in our political system. Kris Childress

Marvin Olasky's new book on Katrina stands out among the rest because it is the first to look closely at "what worked" as well as what failed in the days following the storm. It is the first to identify the important role that faith-based efforts played in the recovery, and most importantly, it is the only book to offer real strategies for the future.

Hurricane Katrina was a national disaster that was played out on an international stage. In this age of instant and graphic communication where there is an increasingly thin line between news and entertainment, the whole world watched while the hurricane bore down on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The world watched with sick fascination as pictures of death and devastation flashed across their television screens. Untold millions watched as the New Orleans levies let go, inundating the city with water. And the world saw the response which was both impressive in its speed and frustrating in its disorganization. In The Politics of Disaster, Marvin Olasky, professor of journalism at the University of Texas and editor-in-chief of World magazine, takes a look back at this disaster and looks forward to the inevitable "Katrinas" of the future. "This book examines incidents, some partially preventable, that have a major negative impact on the ability of an entire community to live peaceably."

Olasky dissects the disaster and gazes into the future. He begins by asking what went wrong in New Orleans. He traces the bulk of the problems to two sources. The first is what he calls "Katrina's paperocracy." This sarcastic sentence tacitly describes the paperocracy: "Perhaps New Orleans could have used even more planning and more meetings to unify the FEMA, OEP, LOEP, NHC, MCI, and ESF plans and experience." New Orleans was prepared, on paper at least, to deal with a Hurricane. Various agencies had plans in place. But these plans were contradictory and allowed little flexibility. Fear of overstepping boundaries, fear of litigation, kept the plans from being effective. "The brutal fact is that big government tends toward big bureaucracy, which means elaborate paper flow but the tendency of one misplaced card to bring down the house."

The second source of problems was the media. "National media had become a megaphone for hysteria and blame. Among the casualties were truth, speed in offering help, and progress in both international affairs and domestic relations." Reporters focused undue attention on the traumatic, dramatic events at the Superdome and the Convention Center. Olasky looks at the reality of the crime and violence in the days after the storm and shows how the media stirred hysteria, constantly reporting rumor as fact and fiction as rumor. This hysteria did great damage to the city. For example, reports of armed gangs and snipers were largely false, but relief efforts were put on hold while soldiers and police were dispatched to hunt down these non-existent criminals. As Olasky says, "crying and yelling made for much better ratings than calm assessment of the damages." News became entertainment. A real-life tragedy became little more than an action movie, and millions sat transfixed by it.

The second section of the book discusses what went right. Olasky looks at rescue, relief and recovery and shows how faith-based organizations, primarily the Salvation Army, the Southern Baptist Convention and local churches, by far outperformed any government agency. The absence of a paperocracy allowed these organizations to move quickly and decisively. He looks also at corporations such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Fed-Ex which played an integral role in relief efforts and which put the government to shame with their speed, preparedness and organization.

In the third section the author suggests ways of reforming national disaster policy and then, in the fourth, proposes how faith-based organizations can take the lead in post-disaster relief efforts. The book wraps up with a chapter on international disasters and another that looks at how America is equipped to deal with one of three disasters likely to strike her in the future: earthquake, terrorism and pandemic.

The final chapter, "Beyond Worry," provides a biblical basis for not becoming overwhelmed with fear of the future. We must avoid both fatalism and undue worry, and place our confidence in God's providence. "Maybe we need to reawaken that understanding if we are to deal with disasters in ways neither foolhardy nor fearful." We can have full assurance that God is in control, that nothing happens apart from His knowledge, even events that are difficult to understand. "What's hard to accept is that the road to contentment runs through misery." As has been so clearly shown in the death of Jesus Christ, pain and suffering can be terrible means to a wonderful end.

The Politics of Disaster shines some much needed light on the events of Katrina, proving that so much of what we witnessed on television was pure fiction. While the disaster was an act of God, it was made far worse by politics, pride and falsehood. We can only hope and pray that the next time a major disaster strikes America, she will be better prepared and that she will have learned from the mistakes of Katrina, for future disaster is inevitable. Clearly the fruit of much research and much consideration, this is an excellent book and one I enjoyed thoroughly.

What Hecker has put together here is more than just a facsimile edition of Poe's early West Point poems; calling it a poetry anthology is insulting. Hecker's "introduction" to the book (which makes up about half the book's pages) is an in-depth discussion of Poe's military career attempts, from an enlisted soldier to his studies to be an officer at West Point. This "introduction" is, bar none, the single most comprehensive discussion of this widely-neglected aspect of Poe's biography. Many biographers gloss over these years as a sort of anomaly in Poe's story, an odd divergence. It's a shame, really, because Hecker enlightens us. He notes that Poe wasn't just giving the military shot, but he was diving in to his endeavors at the (relatively) new West Point Military Academy with gusto and, undeniably, was good at it. Sure, he eventually gave it up after his enthusiasm has passed, but Hecker has really shown that had Poe been interested, he would have made a fine officer (and we'd have a different story to tell about Poe).

On 5 Jan 06, MAJ William F. Hecker, III, 37 years old, was killed in action with (from the Washington Post, dated 10 Jan 06) "...four other soldiers in Najaf (Iraq) when an explosive detonated near their Humvee, the Defense Department said." Also from the Post, his mother said, "He was looking forward to going. He was doing his duty, and he believed in what he was doing and hoped he could make a difference."


"West Point Alma Mater"

Hail Alma Mater dear,
To us be ever near.
Help us thy motto bear
Through all the years.
Let Duty be well performed.
Honor be e'er untarned.
Country be ever armed.
West Point, by thee.

Guide us, thy sons, aright,
Teach us by day, by night,
To keep thine honor bright,
For thee to fight.
When we depart from thee,
Serving on land or sea,
May we still loyal be,
West Point, to thee.

And when our work is done,
Our course on earth is run,
May it be said, "Well done;
Be thou at peace."
E'er may that line of gray
Increase from day to day
Live, serve, and die, we pray,
West Point, for thee.

P.S. Reinecke, 1911


On behalf of all of us West Pointers around the globe, "Well done; be thou at peace, MAJ Hecker."

Chip Armstrong
USMA '83