As a part-time resident of the Vieux Carre, and one who very reluctantly leaves to return to New York, I keep this book in my New York home to look through when I long for New Orleans. This book, with its elegant balck and white historic photos and its vivid descriptive text, captures the best of the Vieux Carre. In fact, I have had great fun trying to match the historic photos to the contemporary Vieux Carre sites on my visits to the Quarter.

I love this book, it's a wonderful gift to anyone who loves that amazing and magical place known as the Vieux Carre.

Tender in prose, painstaking in research, passionate in creation. A worthy addition to any architectural library.

These are no ordinary fictional stories that Ms. Word has made up. Each is real as told to her by people she interviewed in getting ready to write the book. Having been lucky enough to not only grow up in southern Louisiana but to have had the chance to see and visit some of the places she spoke of as well I know the stories to be true. It's worth your time to read this book. If you're a skeptic you won't be anymore by the time you're done with it.

Allright. Ghosts right? Not me, no way. There is no reason why any of us should belive in ghosts right? Wrong. In this book by Ms. Word, you do belive. The reason you do is because this book is REAL. There are no made up stories and like Ms. Word said, all stories she has recorded have been told by the good ol' folks of south Louisiana. I had the good fortune for Ms. Word to visit my elementary school when I lived in So. Louisiana and I was one of the few who bought a copy and had her sign it. Almost 8 years later, I still have this book and as I go through college, these stories still have a firm place in my mind. Even though I no longer live in Louisiana, I can still go back with her book.

Sexy, absorbing and insightful, Valerie Martin's novel The Great Divorce (following her acclaimed Mary Reilly), explores the struggle for power between men and women, nature and civilization, in three mesmerizing tales of very different women whose lives are unraveling.

Ellen Clayton, the vet at the New Orleans Zoo, tries to hold on after her faithless husband of 20 years leaves her for his young secretary. Camille, lonely and depressed, looks after the big cats at the zoo and fantasizes about relationships with sexually and emotionally abusive men.

Juxtaposed with the contemporary stories of Ellen and Camille is the gothic tale of Elisabeth Boyer, the Catwoman, a Creole beauty in antebellum New Orleans who was hanged for murdering her sadistic husband.

Martin fuses these stories of betrayal into a compelling narrative about human nature, passion and animal instinct, evoking the New Orleans of both centuries with equal clarity.

Imaginative and profound, The Great Divorce is a great read that tackles important issues without sentimentality. Despite the inherent sadness and futility that Ellen, Camille and Elisabeth confront, the novel offers a note of hope. 'I think,' Ellen tells her daughter when a young jaguar at the zoo survives an illness, 'this time we win.'

Why isn't Valerie Martin better known? Her work is absolutely dazzling. "The Great Divorce" manages to sustain a level of enjoyably creepy menace from first page to last. It weaves together the stories of three couples, all of whom end up parted in different ways. Each of these stories symbolizes the conflict between man and nature, and each gives us a preview of a different resolution to that conflict. We can part from nature amicably, we can kill it with our indifference to it, or we can be killed by its vengeance against us. This may sound heavy-handed in my telling of it, but it is far from heavy-handed in Martin's telling. The book is a work of gothic fiction, of horror fiction, of historical fiction, as well as a penetrating study of the way we live today. Martin evokes the steamy milieu of pre-Civil War New Orleans as beautifully and as convincingly as she evokes the Crescent City of today. Her language is sinuous and seductive. It has the sleek, sudden power of a jungle cat. And her storytelling skills are masterful. It is shameful that this beautiful book is already out of print. Do yourself a favor and find a used copy. You won't regret it.

This book is a must have research tool for all serious ACW scholars. Dr. Bergeron's research is up to its usual very fine standards. Perhaps we'll get lucky and he'll do another State! Bravo!

The book contains a short history of each of the individual units and an extensive index. The definative book on Lousiana units during the Civil War.

The New Orleans' historic French Quarter was founded in 1718 by the French, moved to Spanish control, and was home to generations of occupants who built grand ballrooms, courtyards, and Spanish structures. Historic Buildings Of The French Quarter uses black and white line drawings to blend history with architectural insights, illustrating building types and styles of different eras and profiling some sixty representative buildings. Students of either regional history or architectural history will find it revealing.

Founded by the French, developed by the Spanish and the West Indian Creoles, finally acquired by the United States, le Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, is sixty-six square blocks of solid history spread over nearly three centuries. Despite several desvastating fires, a surprising amount of early architectural history remains, and this lush volume of pen-and-ink drawings of buildings and floorplans is notable as both history and art. An introductory section describes the sources and development of vernacular architecture in south Louisiana, the roles of wrought iron, brackets on shotgun houses, and the courtyard plan, and the influence of each succeeding cultural overlay. Then, arranged into chronological chapters, Vogt describes in some detail more than forty structures and locations, both public, like Jackson Square (originally la Place d'Armes) and the U.S. Mint (erected in 1838 on the site of Fort San Carlos), to private dwellings, including the Peyroux House (built c.1780), the Bosque House (1795), and the La Rionda-Correjolles House (c.1810)-- with a full discussion of generic building types and styles for each period. How many visitors to the Quarter are aware that Pat O'Brien?s inhabits what was once the townhouse of planter John Garner, or that Preservation Hall was the home of Madame Fanchon, a free woman of color, from 1817 to 1866, or that the Le Carpentier House on Chartres was not only the home of novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes and the birthplace of Paul Morphy but also the site of a series of murders by the Italian "Black Hand"? A glossary and selected bibliography will also be useful to the student, though an index would have been very handy as well. The author is well known among students of New Orleans architecture; his _New Orleans Houses: A House-Watcher's Guide_, now in its fifth printing, has become the standard reference.

This is one of the books that I look at all the time. Easy to read and great info - great pictures. Better than an oyster po boy. Lots of behind the scenes stuff.

A great subject in the hands of a great writer. Hannusch lets the musicians tell their own stories.

My husband purchased this cookbook and now we are giving it as Christmas gifts. The recipes are clear and concise and extremely delicious. They cover the best recipes from South Lousiana Cookeries. Every recipe is a keeper especially for entertaining.
SMB

I've used this book for 20 years - it's the best for authentic Louisiana cooking. The recipies are true, easy to follow, and always good. In case your wondering I was born and raised in Louisiana, so I do know good cajun food.

Anyone can complile a list of ingredients and a set of sterile directions. Gwen McKee does so much more! Her step-by-step section not only tells the reader how to make gumbo, but what to expect the dish to look and smell like during various stages. Get your cast iron skillet, a glass of wine and start stirring!

The first time I ever made gumbo from this book, it was a raving success. I didn;t think I was ever going to try this marvelous New Orleans recipe when I tasted it there. The opening chapter called step-by-step to great gumbo is exactly that and led me through it. Now I feel comfortable trying all sorts of gumbos and dazzling my guests. Great book

If novels were "branded" at point-of-sale not only by genre but also by target demographic -- in a way analogous to the way in which many cable channels work to "brand" themselves as the first choice among their own target audience -- then this series by James Sallis would almost certainly belong "on PBS".

I had hesitated to sample this series because -- with no just cause -- I had concerned myself with the possibility that this series may play better on "The WB", and I encourage you not to make my mistake.

Lew Griffin is a fully-fleshed character -- unusually multidimensional in comparison to any other fictional detective I have had the pleasure of knowing. If I were any other author of the genre I would envy Sallis greatly for his ability to make a character feel so real, so likeable, and so constantly interesting -- more so when I stop to consider that objectively, and only in retrospect, the plotting here seems pretty simple -- its best and perhaps primary feature simply being the means by which new facets and depths of Lew's character are revealed.

But PBS? Well, I also don't want to scare you off by virtue of whatever negative opinions you may have about that. If you want a hard-boiled detective, I don't think they come much harder than Lew Griffin. By the end of the second novel in this series (Moth) Lew has bashed, been bashed and gotten smashed with the best of them. And yes, there are women in his life. Interesting women!

... So, check it out and in so doing, encourage Sallis to provide us with many more additions. These are solid gold.

African American detective Lew Griffin first appeared back in 1992 in this novel by acclaimed, although largely unknown, author James Sallis. The story follows Griffin as he investigates four cases of missing persons. His success varies and even when he locates the people he's looking for, he never actually finds the object of his search.

This mystery is not really a mystery at all. Rather, it's the story of thirty years in the life of a hurting, flawed man trying to live a quiet existence in New Orleans. Rather than being epic in its sweep, though, "Fly" is minimalist. Sallis is a poet in addition to being an author and it shows in this book.

I suppose it's understandable that Sallis hasn't enjoyed wider success in the genre--his books certainly don't grab you in the same way that most mysteries do--but it's definitely a shame. Readers who are interested in more than simply solving a mystery will definitely find something to admire in this book.

Ever remembered a sentence or two from the book and, still later on, didn't recall where it comes from? Well, there is one in the 'The lost boy' that I'd say I'll never forget. It goes: 'Light came and went and came again...' I would believe this is the best definition of Time I've ever read. It tells what we all already know - that the Time is here, all around, that it passes, eternally, incessantly, giving us no chance to do anything about it. And although there's much more to the nouvellette, it's worth reading it from the beginning to the end. It's 'realness' moves you all along.

This book is a gem! It is brimming with lyricism, longing and passion. It is Wolfe at his very best. For those who feel that Wolfe tended to ramble, here they will find him constrained by the limits of the novella form. They will find his skill for characterization (which was always remarkable) honed to an even higher degree of excellence in this piece. The story is autobiographical and deeply felt by Wolfe and he succeeds in transmitting those feelings to the reader. It is my belief that even if he had written nothing else, his reputation could rest comfortably on this piece alone.