Louisiana Books

This book is an excellent guide to enjoy the best New Orleans has to offer. The restaurants atmosphere, service, price and food was exactly as the book stated. New Orleans has so many choices, this guide sends you to the right choice for every meal.

I love living in New Orleans, but mostly I love EATING in New Orleans. We are blessed with fabulous restaurants that serve wonderful meals at unreal prices. Tom's book is an excellent guide to the best of the city when it comes to dining. Buy it and have a great New Orleans meal.

Julia Schueler seemed to float through history. Her view of the world's progression is everything it should be, funny, emotional and honest. This is a wonderful book.

Julia Schueler's autobiographical book remembers the story of a girl who always lives elsewhere - Russia, Germany, France, America. . . She interlaces the past with the present - often within the same page. She describes people's lives, hopes, fears during the 1930's and 1940's during World War II (we Americans tend to think Hitler's terror began with Pearl Harbor). She does not paint with a broad brush - the details are exquisite.

Unlike most monolingual English speaking Americans, Julia's world was/is peopled with many languages, many cultures. Her style of writing is unique and made me want to taste each word, each phrase, each story - and often I reread. Some books make the reader sad to see that there are fewer and fewer pages left to be read. "Elsewhere: A Memoir" is one of those books. -Diana DeMille

What a pleasure to read! Robert's recollections of 'simpler times' are vivid and engaging. I can easily visualize the old home place, though I've never seen it. An easy and pleasant read that takes you back in time and away from the hectic life and everyday pressures we all face. Thanks for a great bit of history and perspective of life in the deep South, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

What was it like to grow up in the Great Depression, to experience childhood according to the rhythms of farm life in a north Louisiana community where friends, family, school, and church defined the dimensions of daily life? History buffs and those interested in the landscape of the old south will find much to enjoy in Robert Aycock's memoir, Essays of Remembrance, which follows the author from his boyhood on the farm to his college days at LSU in the boisterous aftermath of the Huey Long era. The book's vivid and detailed account of wartime experiences in the Army Medical Corps offers a fascinating glimpse of the World War II homefront at a time when care for sick and injured soldiers predated the discovery of the sulfonamides and antibiotics. Aycock writes of special friendships formed, and the haunting reminder of friends and the thousands of others who did not survive the great conflict.

The stories collected in <> are easy to read, even gripping, and you might even end up sitting down and not getting up until you've finished the collection. Then you can go back and read your favorites again and again. Mine: "The Last of the Spanish Blood," "The Test," "Noise of Strangers." Read your favorites again and know that when Garrett (in the intro) calls the story a gift, he's speaking more truly than maybe even he realizes.

George Garrett is a consummate craftsman. There is no writer of short stories alive in America who can get you into a story faster than Garrett. If you want to learn how to write in this genre, there can be few better exemplars. It is true that you sometimes wish the stories ended more imaginatively, but they always do end inevitably--as they must. The pacing of Garrett's plots is always exactly right; his ear for dialogue never falters. The range of these stories is extensive, set as they are in small towns of the South (Florida), academic communities, military bases, Europe. The characters themselves include devilish boys, soldiers, mean-spirited academicians, small-town law. This collection, which will make you laugh and weep, is a book you'll want to travel with--it's definitely a book you'll be beating up.

EXPLORING NEW ORLEANS is loaded with the history of jazz, voodoo, and Mardi Gras--the heritage of this venerable city. With a background on the diverse population, cultures, unique architecture, inimitable music, and fabulous food, your experience in New Orleans is greatly enriched, and you are ready to explore: Cities of the Dead; Louisiana Children's Museum; Riverboats, streetcars, and swamp tours; French Market, Bourbon Street, and the French Quarter; Marie Laveau, voodoo, and African Spiritism--you will be enthralled by Exploring New Orleans: A Family Guide. Read about Mardi Gras, Storyville, historic Cornstalk Fence and Hotel, St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line, and the Garden District Walking Tour. This will become a favorite book! Cajun recipes included!
Exploring New Orleans: A Family Guide

From zydeco to jazz to the casket girls, Exploring New Orleans is a great fun-to-read book that is a must for any visitor or resident of this seductive city.In her humorous style, Larenda Lyles Roberts explores the history of jazz, voodoo, cities of the dead, Cajun and Creole culture and popular attractions in a readable, interesting style. She even includes recipes from authentic Cajun cooks! This book makes a wonderful guide to the city and made me fall in love with New Orleans!

*Family Gathering* is a rare gift: a book that one can share with others.

I first read the book after encountering some of Chappell's other poetry and prose and hearing him read at a conference. Making full use of rhyme and structure, Chappell weaves a tale of some kind of family gathering--the occasion isn't important. The fact that the family has congregated together is. Framed by poems about a young girl who can't understand's adults' need to talk everything to death at such gatherings, Chappell's book roams from person to person, introducing us to characters like Uncle Einar, a likable blow-hard who "smokes his big cigar." We also meet his wife, Aunt Wilma, who "makes him pay" for every mistake the old philanderer commits. We meet others as well, some named and some not. The strength of this approach is obvious: we all have these people in our families. We all know an Uncle Einar; we all have at least one outcast cousin; we all have that one aunt at our reunions who insists on taking everyone's picture.

Chappell's poems are laugh-out-loud funny, a rarity these days when poetry tends to be about little but itself.

*Family Gathering* is a book you can buy for those non-poetry poeple on your gift list. It'll show them that poetry can indeed be for everybody and needn't be an exclusive, elitist pursuit.

Fred Chappell, one of our modern poetic masters, has given us a book that brings its reader no-holds-barred pleasure. Chappell renders his family portraits with wit and craft, using rhyme, for example, that makes us sit up and take notice, lift our ears, ready for more. This book is a loving, though sometimes caustic and, yes, sly, evocation of family. We finish reading it feeling as if we know these people, indeed have always known them. Chappell invites us onto the front porch, into the kitchen, the parlor, the upstairs and downstairs of a dwelling populated by an extended family as eccentric and memorable as our own.

Carolyn Haines has done it again. With her prose that flows as smoothly as the dark waters of the swamps of Louisiana, she plunges the reader into this land of superstition, spirits and mystery. Haines has always been a story teller of the first degree, but she gets better and better. Don't be misled. This is not one of Haines' golden happy girl tales (see the Delta Mystery Series) though they are wonderful in their own right. Fever Moon keeps the reader on the edge of the page, but don't read it without turning on all the lights.

Society has always had an ingrained fear of strangers. In more primitive or rural societies, where attitudes might be governed by legends and/or superstition, people who were ill might be regarded as possessed. False claims and public hysteria could lead to people being executed as in the Salem witch trials.

The present story is set in the rural bayous of Louisiana during the early 1940s. This is Cajun country, with attitudes passed down from the Acadians with origins in France. The wealthiest man in the parish has been brutally killed and a young woman was found near the body. She appears ill and delirious. Rumors arise that she is a werewolf. While being treated by a local herbal specialist, Madam Louiselle, she disappears into the night.

Deputy Sheriff Raymond Thibodeaux is investigating, but must deal with a variety of problems. This was a time when prisoners from the state prison at Angola were leased out to plantation owners to be used as what amounted to slave labor (the ancient practice of selling criminals into slavery). The unsavory victim of the crime, a man not well liked, had been using such laborers, one of whom is believed to have escaped. There are a large number of people who had reasons for wanting the man dead.

Various characters come into play. There is a Catholic priest assigned to the parish (he would have preferred to be in Ireland). There is a local doctor dealing with various illnesses and injuries. There is the Sheriff, who seems more concerned with politicing than police work. There is the sadistic boss of the work crew on the plantation. There is the brother of the missing woman, who lives in the marshes with his dogs. There is the postmistress, a woman who has managed to break into a government job normally reserved for men. And there is a local prostitute who would really rather be a teacher if events in the past had not taken a bad turn.

Raymond, who was discharged from the Army with a disability, must deal with the ghosts from his own past as he tries to head off mob hysteria, find the missing woman, and try to solve the case. It is a dark tale worth reading.

I have read most of the books written by this author and loved everyone of them. The prequel to this book is the last story in Thicker than Water by Kendra Norman-Bellamy.

This story finished what the story 'The Devils's Advocate' started. Great story with a lot of twists and turns but the ending was beautiful. Another great and inspirational story by Linda Hudson-Smith.

Before I begin, I must acknowledge that this book was written by my nephew and it is based on his grandfather's (my father and name sake) WWII journals.

Greg Daddis, the author, is a graduate of West Point, a veteran of Desert Storm and currently serving as a Major in the US Army. This is not 'Saving Private Ryan', but a very factual, meticulously researched and well documented perspective on WWII, as it correlates to the actual journal entries made by my dad as he began basic training, then on to Officer Candidate's School (90 day wonders), overseas for the build up in England, on to the war in Europe and his eventual return to the states. Greg makes a point of the fact that we fought WWII with a civilian army and my dad epitomizes that fact.

More 'History Channel' then 'Hollywood'...Greg took no 'literary license' and included every journal entry exactly as it was written, without corrections or deletions...he then provided a detailed and documented historical perspective as it related to the entries that were being made in the journals and spaced throughout the book.

As to my 5 star rating...it's a book written by my nephew who I'm very proud of, about my father who I loved dearly...what other rating could I possibly have given it? ;-)

Anyone interested in American history in general, or American military history in particular, will appreciate the discovery of an untapped diary of an American soldier. Gregory Daddis has unlocked one such diary of a young artillery officer in World War II. What is more, Daddis offers a history of one of the least mentioned, "work horse," divisions, as Russell F. Weigley discribes it in the Foreword, in the European Theater: the U.S. 8th Infantry Division. Daddis reproduces the daily journal entries of George Schwend verbatum. Schwend hides his emotions and sticks to logging his daily routine. Other than his obvious love for his fiance Jean at home, we never know his fears, hopes, aspirations or opinions. Yet the entries shed interesting insight to the training of the U.S. Army (Gen. Eisenhower called the 8th Division the best trained unit to enter the ETO). From the cultural aspect, Schwend lists every movie he saw in three years in the Army. In addition, Schwend's log shows the postal system during the war years, was quite efficient. According to Schwend's daily weather discriptions, except for scattered days, perhaps the weather in Europe (and the 8th Division was in the thick of it) was not abnormally cold as some historians have claimed. Throughout the book, Daddis placed Schwend and the 266 days the 8th Division saw combat from Normandy, Brittany, the bitter Hurtgen Forest, the crossings of the Roer and Rhine Rivers and the horror encountered at the Wobbelin concentration camp in overall perspective. As a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, Major Daddis offers some analysis of his own on combined operations, the role of artillery, and the command structure of the U.S. Army in World War II. Daddis draws from a wealth of sources including some unpublished manuscripts housed at the West Point library, used here for the first time. My only criticism is the book is too short. A valuable addition to the lexicon of the "citizen-soldier!"

As a preface to my review of Vetter's book, .Fonville Winans' Louisiana: Politics, People and Places I am obliged to first speak about his subject, Fonville Winans. Not knowing who captured the images until much later, I was captivated by Winans' photographs early on.

Over time, living in Baton Rouge, LA, I learned more about the man and explored the different areas his wonderful photograpy encompassed. More than any other, I was and continue to be moved the most by his photographs of the inhabitants of Coastal and South Louisiana of his day; those of the old fisherman and oystermen, with their sun and wind-chiseled features that said much about who they were and the things they stood for in life. One of the first photos that I came to recognize as Winans' was that of the old bus on Grand Isle, LA. I believe it was Fonville Winans' work that sparked my life-long love of black & white photography.

Initially, not knowing its history, while in graduate school at LSU, I located a small cafe on the edge of a neighborhood called "Spanish Town." Its attraction to me was three-fold; the low price of a simple, yet filling meal, the live accoustic music featured nightly, and, more than any other, an unmistakable ambience that emanated from the old brick building with its front double-door facing the street corner. Soon, I learned the building was originally the studio of Fonville Winans. I believe the ambience there was the echo of his creativity and had little to do with current decor there.

Having said that, I believe Vetter's book captures all these aspects of Fonville, his work, and much more. Sans the ability to own an original made by this magical photographer or bottle the ambience borne of his creativity, this book provides a means of returning, many times over, to the photographs I have grown to love. This makes Vetter's book a "must have" for me and I think if you have any interest in the art of Fonville Winans, the same would be true for you. Furthermore, if you have not been introduced to Winans, Vetter's compilation will open the man and his photograpy to you.

Thanks for reading, Robb

This is an unusual book. It offers a glimpse into a treasure trove little known beyond south Louisiana. How appropriate that LSU press should dedicate resources to preserving this material and making it available to a wider audience.

For those of my parent's generation who grew up in Baton Rouge, getting a "Fonville" portrait was as much a rite of passage as visiting the Paramount Theatre (now a parking lot) on Third Street (now Riverside Mall).

Fonville Winans' reach went beyond documenting the lives of Baton Rouge society, however, and this book capture the remarkable range of his interest. All the major figures in Louisiana politics are here, either out on the stump or in more formal posed portraits. There are also photographs of other parts of Louisiana life: music, festivals, farmland and river bottoms.

The book offers a rare glimpse into a long-gone time and place. Though it's a much bigger and elaborate book, it's reminiscent of Eudora Welty's _One Time, One Place_. A special treat is the evocative CD that paints an aural picture to match the photographs.

So now you, too, can have a Fonville.