Louisiana Books

I originally bought this book for a child who was in the St.Louis Muny Opera because the Muny is on the site of the 1904 World's Fair. I also purchased one later for my son, who will be a history teacher. I read the book myself and was so amazed that something as wonderful as this fair is little known, especially for those of us who grew up in the area. There are details in this book, as well as pictures, that would interest many. Did you know that the Ferris Wheel actually had cars big enough to hold 60 people and weddings often took place on the Ferris Wheel?!? That is only one of the many interesting things you will read about in this book.

This book is based on a collection of about 150 pictures of the fair taken by the author's father. The pictures are very good and give a very good idea of the fair to anyone who is truly interested in the fair.

The map of the fair ground is interesting too, with its comparison to the present day Forest Park.

In addition, Mrs. Daniels Birk has explained the activities and events at the fair ground in a very smooth manner, from the eyes of a visitor !!

This is not a detailed narration of the fair. I know there were 45 nations represented at the fair. I was especially looking for any mention about a building on East India, but couldn't find anything about it.

A real good book !

I first read this book, quite by chance, a year or two after I returned from Vietnam. I have read it several times since then; specifically, whenever my memory starts to fail me, and I start to think about how good I had it in the Army.

Like the Army itself, Yancey's War is short on actuall combat scenes and long on abject misery. Although the story takes place during the Second World War, it was just as relivant in 1971 as it was in 1945. And I suspect that a GI reading it today would relate to most, if not all, of the events in the book. No book that I have ever read captures the essense of just how bad it bites to be an enlisted man in the US Army, the way Hoffman did with this book. And it surprises me that it isn't better known than it is.

Oh yes, we all know this man. This Yancey and his limitations. We all find him sometimes despicable and often pathetic. We, from time to time, want to to leave--to put the book down and take a deep breath--but can't. We have to see it through to the end. Too well written. Too unbelievably descriptive. After the last sentence, you close the book and say one word: Damn.

Beautifully various and distinguished--like a needle in the eye. I adore this book and this poet.

Year of Morphines
Poems
Betsy Brown
The National Poetry Series / Selected by George Garrett
"Allusive, edgy, smart, and utterly relentless, the poems of Year of Morphines move gracefully in the zone between our necessary morphine spells of forgetting and life's implausible reclamations: `. . . all these stories ending with life.'"-George Garrett, from his judge's citation
Betsy Brown is no stranger to loss. Breast cancer runs rampant in her family; both her mother and her thirty-two-year-old sister died of the disease and another sister has been diagnosed with its late stages. Her father also fell victim to cancer, this time pancreatic. The poems in Brown's stunning first book pivot around the mechanisms we use in facing loss and fear-whether those confrontations are as wrenching as a bone marrow transplant or as confused as a brief love.
In lyric verses with a driving narrative force, the poet depicts loved ones coping with illness, sometimes achieving recovery, and reshaping a family. From his hospital bed a father relates "the color of his pain-killers, / the in-and-out narcotic conversations / of the doomed." A woman recalls Baltimore, where her sister received treatment, as "a city of doctors, messy brain scans, / slick cobblestoned lanes thick / with Christmas." She returns to the spot where her sister's cremated remains were scattered, relishing "the secrets of ashes, / the clean wash of lake water / like all the nights we sat / with the little waves lapping."
An unusually intimate collection, Year of Morphines is both a heartbreaking portrait of the process of death and encouraging evidence of life's perseverance.
A native of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Betsy Brown works in corporate communications in Minneapolis.

The Louisiana crawfish has been known the world over as a delicious food source, but only recently have other practical uses for the crustacean been discovered. This is a funny book of cartoons, an interesting keepsake for anyone who loves Louisiana food and culture.

I am from New Orleans, and this book was a great reference. You can discover the city, and even learn more about fun things and the historical places to see in New Orleans, and not just the night life! - Which is great, but we have days too and they are worth the time to explore this beautiful city of ours.

Any serious student of public speaking needs to read it. It's so insightful and easy to read.

Item contains useful information for anyone attempting a genealogical exploration, which might include an ancestor of color who lived in the New Orleans area at post Civil War time. (reviewer's disclosure: the author is my sister)

I highly recommend this two-volume set as a first step towarding delving into the history of this southern Louisiana area. Mary Alice Fontenot has done an excellent job of researching and documenting many events and personalities in Acadia Parish, and appears to have thoroughly documented her resources. Reading through this set of books has sparked my interest in learning more about Acadia Parish, as I believe was Ms. Fontenot's intent. Her closing remark in the foreword of Volume II states, "It is hoped that these topics will be more fully developed within the near future, and that one of Acadia's most valuable historical resources -- the recollection of its senior citizens -- will be more widely recognized and utilized." I sincerely hope Ms. Fontenot has continued to research Acadia Parish history and will publish additional volumes to this set in the near future.

Inspired by the culinary traditions of southern Louisiana's beautiful plantations along the Atchafalaya Basin country, the "Acadian Plantation Country Cookbook" is a compilation of superbly presented recipes selected and compiled by bed and breakfast operator Anne Butler whose B&B is located on her family homestead in the historic Butler Greenwood Plantation -- which has been in her family since the 1790s. Therefore Anne brings to bear a very special expertise with recipes ranging from Smothering Beef -- Cajun Style; Louisiana Grits Bread; Crawfish Gumbo; and Jim Bowie's Hush Puppies; to Fried Alligator; Chretien Point Plantation Praline French Toast; Cajun Classic Boudin; and Richard's Smoked Sausage Jambalaya. The recipes are organized according to the plantation they are associated with and interspersed in an informative text and historic photographs illustrating each particular plantation whose cuisine is being showcased. An elegant tribute to Louisiana's culinary traditions, Anne Bulter's "Acadian Plantation Country Cookbook" is a highly prized and recommended addition to family and community library cookbook collections.

Now the shadows of night gather round,
Foreign drums make their terrible sound.
They may tear us apart,
But they can't still the heart
of your people, O sweet Acadie!

The above verse from the song O, O Acadie! by James Peter Louviere [page 53] speaks to the hearts of all people of Acadian descent. At age 35, I didn't know I was such a descendant -- until that day I stood on the ground impounded from the sea by my ancestors in Acadia over 350 years earlier. Luxuriant green fields stretched out in every direction with only the Church of St. Charles in Grand Pré punctuating the view, and a feeling welled up inside of me that brought tears to my eyes, tears which yet arise today as I type these words. This land, stretching as far as I could see, belonged to my ancestors and it was rudely and illegally wrenched from them in the eighteenth century by an agent of the British crown. I felt as if I had returned home to a place that I had never been before.
Warren Perrin has brought the story of the peace-loving Acadians to life within the covers of this book. He describes how our mutual ancestors only wanted peace with their neighbors and whoever claimed to be "governing" them, the French or the English. Unfortunately both the French and English disliked the Acadians and made life tough for them. After the Acadians had been promised to be allowed to remain peacefully settled in Acadia, a Governor of the region, without authority from the Queen, decided to deport all the Acadians, stripping them of their land, their farms, and most of their possessions. How this came to be is the heart of this book.
When I stood in the green grass of Grand Pré in June, 1975, it never occurred to me that I was violating a law of the Crown specifying that Acadians would be subject to punishment, even death, for returning to Acadia! That law stood unchallenged on the books until Warren Perrin, a Cajun and a lawyer, challenged the Queen to issue a proclamation to undo the law and apologize to the Cajuns, among other things. In December, 2003 the proclamation was issued.
I hear that Warren Perrin is now planning a French translation of this book so all the french-speaking world might hear of this story of courage and redemption.

Bobby Matherne, New Orleans, Descendant of Babins at Fort Royal, Acadia, 1605