City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300

ISBN-10: 146964715X
ISBN-13: 9781469647159
Category: History
Pages: 424
Language: English
Published: 2018-09-25
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Author: Jason Berry

Description

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.

Get the book

Similar books

City Of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York
By Tyler Anbinder
City of Dreams is the long-overdue, inspiring, and defining account of New York’s immigrants, both famous and forgotten: the young man from the Caribbean who relocated to New York and became a founding father; Russian-born Emma Goldman, ...
City of Dreams and Nightmare
By Ian Whates
THEY CALL IT "THE CITY OF A HUNDRED ROWS".
Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams
By Bartosz Sztybor
Written by Bartosz Sztybor (CD PROJEKT RED writer and narrative manager, Witcher: Fading Memories)) with art by Filipe Andrade (Old Man Logan, Rocket Raccoon & Groot) and Alessio Fioriniello (Paris Fashion Slam) comes a tale about the ...
The Arsonists' City
By Hala Alyan
"The Arsonists' City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan's hands, one family's tale becomes the story of a nation--Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States.
City of Lost Dreams: A Novel
By Magnus Flyte
The exhilarating, genre-bending sequel to the sensational New York Times bestseller City of Dark Magic “If you’re looking for a time-travel mystery with laughs, danger, and a romantic interest clad in lederhosen (and who isn’t?), look ...
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles
By Gary Krist
159 lived outside downtown : Sitton , Metropolis , p . 2 . 159 suburban , even antiurban , ethos : Fogelson , Fragmented , p . 147 . 159 " a city without a center " : McWilliams , Southern California , p . 235 .
City of Dreams: Stories
By Pranaya Sjb Rana
In the title story, a Kathmandu native wanders the streets of his hometown and encounters a deep secret.
In the Time of Famine
By Michael GRANT
With the famine as a backdrop, this is a story about two families as different as coarse wool and fine silk. Michael Ranahan, the son of a tenant farmer, dreams of breaking his bondage to the land and going to America.
A Million Junes
By Emily Henry
June O'Donnell and Saul Angert, the daughter and son of two long-feuding families, fall in love while trying to uncover the truth about a curse that has plagued their bloodlines for generations
Big City, Big Dreams (Barbie)
By Random House
"Barbie travels to the big city to follow her dreams!"--Back cover.