Louisiana Books

OMG, this book changed my life! Mostly it was for the worse, because I don't really like civil law.

This is a civil law property casebook for Louisiana Civil Law Property. It is very well organised and has very simple cases that are easy to read. You will learn about enthralling topics such as creation of the strip, who owns the strip, and how to steal property from your neighbors through the use of cows and other livestock (note, you should probably take note of trespass laws before you attempt this.) Mostly, this book is essential if you want to get a decent grade in Civil Law Property at LSU, TTTulane, Loyola, Southern, or another school crazy enough to offer coursework in louisiana civil law property. Enjoy One El year!

A must read for any Civil War buff, especially those from Louisiana. The importance of Louisiana as the gate-keeper of the Mississippi makes an understanding of the conflict there paramount.

Avery O. Craven in his slim collection of lectures in taking a more interpretive than narrative approach to the Civil War finds that the majority of people in the North and South were conservative and only reluctantly came to war. Unlike most historians, he believes that slavery was not the primary cause of the war. He admits in another of his books, "The Coming of the Civil War," that his approach is "revisionist" but he said that his "effort in this book was to balance the picture, not to present a Southern point of view or to defend slavery" (vii). He believes that he was more fairly presenting the issues involved leading up to the war rather than accepting traditional, northern-centric biases.

In his shorter book, he says that Lincoln's election precipitated secession because the South found that it must submit to Republican Party views or lose its way of life. He finds that the attitudes within that party justifiably gave rise to southern fears about its political domination and eventual abolition. Revolutionary changes in the North were based on its views of wealth and sin. He finds a cooperative management/labor paradigm shifting to an exploitative one in the new industrial North which led, in part, to condemning slavery as contributing to the problems of those exploited northern workers and farmers. Moral aspects in the North including religious revivalism combined with political reasons added to the party's antislavery stance which the South interpreted as primarily an abolition threat. Thus the disparate groups which finally made up the Republican Party gave southern interests valid reasons for worry over the future political power of the South and the concomitant threats to slavery.

In the South where radical change was anathema, any thoughts of becoming "modernized" along the northern paradigm were viewed with horror. Attitudes therefore hardened in the South as well as the North and finally all of the abstractions boiled down to a very simple, but profound difference as expressed by Lincoln in 1860: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted" (67). Alexander Stephen's position maintained the southern right to slavery because the Constitution protected that property right and therefore could not be restricted.

Craven emphasizes the anti-slavery debates in some southern states to make his point that before positions of the two sections hardened in the 1850's there was a substantial minority in the South which did not view chattel slavery as a positive good. But after the Compromise of 1850, the economic interests of the Northwest and Northeast united against southern interests paving the way for a clearer North-South conflict. Craven finds that the forces involved in creating the "Modern World" mainly after 1830 forced great changes and "these forces made long standing problems acute and clothed them with emotion" (85 footnote). The South could not accept a weakened colonial status and definitely not accept the impending social-economic revolution (86).

I found Craven's short book thought provoking because it challenged my orthodox, northern-centric biases of the causes of the war. Unfortunately, due to the book's brevity, he was unable to include footnotes, a bibliography, or an index. His studying the origins of the war from a scientific perspective is an excellent way to search for more complete explanations for the conflict. I appreciated his intentional use of a southern perspective to help counter the standard northern-oriented perspectives which predominate.

Anyone who has done research on the Civil War approaches veteran's memoirs with a degree of caution. Memoirs are always self serving to some extent and often take too much advantage of hindsight. This work is remarkably free of such justifications. Rather it is the honest work of a soldier coming to terms with his war experiences. Philip Stephenson was a mere boy from St. Louis, age 15, when he followed his brother, Hammett, to Memphis to join the Confederat army. Hammett enlisted in the 13th Ark. and the underage Philip tagged along. He served as something of a mascot to his brother's company until he enlisted in the 5th Co. Washington Artillery. Until then he seemed to be free to come and go. Stephenson was present at or near most of the actions of the Army of Tennessee. He relates what he observed in great detail particularly in the last year of the war. Through his memoirs we see what he saw on the march, on the field and in camp. His descriptions of various Arkansans from officers to enlisted men offer rare insights to the boys which can be found in no other place. His observations on the men of the 13th Ark. are somewhat condescending, but he says, "All of them made as fine fighting material as the world could produce." The first one-third of his text covers the years 61-63. The greatest part of his memoirs discuss affairs that took place from 64 to the end of the war. From the Atlanta campaign until the war ends, his writing seems much more personal, more expressive of his emotions at the time. This coincides with the period when he served in the 5th Co. of the Washington Artillery and marked the first period of the war that he was not under his older brother's wing. From the moment Sherman attacked the Rebs at Dalton in early May until the Battle of Jonesboro on Sept. 1st, the men were in constant danger. Stephenson notes the horrors of trench warfare and the stress that it put on the men. The pressure became too great for some and he describes some of those who cracked. One member of his battery horrified the other members by taking his bayonet and jabbing out the eys of a dead yankee. Another deliberately walked between the lines to relieve himself as everyone watched in disbelief and the man was killed by a sharpshooter. Clearly this campaign had pushed many of the men to the breaking point. Perhaps no other participant has been as effective and honest in telling this story. Stephenson's account of the Battle of Franklin is very moving. His unit had been guarding a bridge some 30 miles away from Franklin and by forced march had arrived on the field between 9 o'clock at night just as the battle was dying down. Stephenson's one thought was the welfare of his brother and friends in the 13th Ark and he went among the wounded crying out "Where's Govan's Brigade." He finds his 3 best friends badly wounded and there on the battlefield they break into tears to find each other still alive. If there had been any thought of winning the war, it ended there. After Franklin, surviving would replace winning as the ultimate goal. Stephenson's memoirs are very personal. Through them we see how one survivor deals with his memories of both the best times and the worst times of his life.

(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)

Captain Seymour has left us a lively and lucid account of his Civil War experiences, from a rare account of the bombardment of Fort Jackson (New Orleans) in April 1862, to later service with the 1st Louisiana brigade with the Army of Northern Virginia.

Seymour, a New Orleans newspaperman, shows a fine disregard for accuracy which sheds no glory on his profession, but editor Jones gently footnotes the narrative with the necessary corrections.

Interesting read; worthwhile.

I bought this book for my 3.5 year old grandson. He has fallen in love with it - sleeps with it and the Bidon Box Turtle. He corrects pronounciations of others who read it. He is also learning geography (Texas, South Lousiana, and Mississippi). The chacters are all loveable and the illustrations (mostly in color in the newwer versions) are wonderful. He is now having us work with him to create the different characters in play dough.

Allen Tate is one of the finest poets of the 20th Century and it is a pleasure to be able to read his poetry again in the fullest collection to date. There are some signature poems like "The Mediterranean" and "Ode to the Confederate Dead" and "The Swimmers" which would stand out in any collection of Modern Poetry. There are minor masterpieces as well, such as "Death of Little Boys" and "Aeneas in Washington" and "Seasons of the Soul" to which a reader would want to return many times. Just reading Tate's poetry at the present time makes one realize how meagre current poetry is and what greatness lies in the past century.

A New Critic to her core, Gordon's discipline, control, and craftsmanship shine through in her short stories. This collection should show anyone why she was such a tremendous influence on Flannery O'Connor. As a master of the short story, Gordon deserves the recognition accorded O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty. I hope someone will reissue Gordon's anthology 'The House of Fiction.'

Excellent quality. Fast service. Smart buy.

This is a highly entertaining, yet very scholarly biography of Colonel George St. Ledger Grenfell-- a colorful British soldier of fortune and member of General Morgan's staff.

Grenfell's life is exciting and very unusual. It was filled with danger, adventure, high excitement, and risk after risk.

The author is widely reknowned for his superb history of the Union cavalry in the Civil War. Grenfell is one of those cavalier Confederate heroes that makes the Civil War so fascinating. He's a man that feels most at home in battle very much like Stonewall Jackson, Patrick Cleburne, or Jeb Stuart.

Grenfell had the misfortune after he left Morgan's staff (under a cloud) to get involved in Confederate Secret Service plans which, after a lengthy show trial, got him imprisoned in the very harsh prison of the Dry Tortugas off the coast of Florida. He, as noted by Starr, fully understood that Morgan's flashy raids often involving thievery and petty crime on the part of the soldiers, were far less helpful to the Confederate war effort than popular southern journalists of the time had characterized. Grenfell properly understood that Morgan was the flashy facade and General Basil Duke was actually the brains of Morgan's cavalry.

Being the adventurer and risk-taker that he was, Grenfell attempted to escape from the Dry Tortugas. He was never heard from again.

Starr is an excellent writer and brings this otherwise mythic character of Grenfell very much to life. While a minor player in the drama that was the Civil War, his association with Morgan and with Duke makes the study of him a fascinating backdoor entre to the world of Morgan's Raiders. I recommend this biography to any fan of interesting characters. The book is well-documented and finely written. This is a very exciting biography and certainly illustrates that any historian who makes an exciting personage boring has utterly failed.

Much in the same way that the death of John Adams in David McCullough's superb biography saddened me, the death/disappearance of Grenfell at the end of this biography was a sad moment for me. Part scoundrel, part scallowag, part world-traveling adventurer, and completely a complex multi-faceted character, George St. Ledger Grenfell rightfully deserves the attention given him in this excellent biography.