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A Short History of New Orleans
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 26, 2013
This "short history" was filled with amazing stories of the birth and development of New Orleans. I couldn't beleive how little I knew/learned of the city's history after attending Tulane University for five years (as an engineering student). Ironic, that one goes somewhere to obtain an "education" and leaves with little or distorted knowledge about the place one resided while obtaining the "education". This book has made me so much more aware of the complexity of the city's formation, besides the fact that it is situated below the surface of the Mississippi River and must rely on huge stormwater pumps to keep the city from being flooded during rainfall events. For tourists in particlular who are planning a visit, I recommend this book highly. For Americans who want to learn more about how the Native Americans, Spanish and the French shaped the culture of this area, it is also highly recommended.
January 22, 2011
I started reading this forever ago, but never finished it. But yea, today I did. Much of what I share with teams on French Quarter tours came from this book, heck, I sure hope it factual!
On the back of the book someone from the New Orleans Time- Picayune wrote "So readable you'll probably go through it at a sitting." Oh my gosh, this is so untrue! Of course this book was published 28 years ago, maybe at that time this was considered readable, but according to today's low standards, it sure did not seem to flow and took effort to read, anything but easy! It would be a hard book to speed read. Mel has a pretty big vocabulary too
On the back of the book someone from the New Orleans Time- Picayune wrote "So readable you'll probably go through it at a sitting." Oh my gosh, this is so untrue! Of course this book was published 28 years ago, maybe at that time this was considered readable, but according to today's low standards, it sure did not seem to flow and took effort to read, anything but easy! It would be a hard book to speed read. Mel has a pretty big vocabulary too
October 13, 2015
This is short history of New Orleans. This is a little of what I read in another book. They built New Orleans below the sea level of the Mississippi and then they have to have pumps to keep it cleared up. This is the dumbest plan I have ever heard of. They cannot sustain any big storm with this system.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews