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Bienville's Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans
All New Orleans' glories, tragedies, contributions, and complexities can be traced back to the geographical dilemma Bienville confronted in 1718 when selecting the primary location of New Orleans. "Bienville's Dilemma" presents sixty-eight articles on the historical geography of New Orleans, covering the formation and foundation of the city, its urbanization and population, its "humanization" into a place of distinction, the manipulation of its environment, its devastation by Hurricane Katrina, and its ongoing recovery.
429 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 20, 2012
fabulously conceived and quite brilliantly written (for a geographer, hahaha), Bienville's Dilemma is astounding in both its scope, (covering physical, cultural, social, and political geographies/urban spaces of New Orleans)and its particularities. It's a scholarly work with populist roots. While its daunting 598 endnotes may be offputting to those who may equate archival research with dull prose, it compellingly portrays the diversity of the city's people, history, and events through its spectacular focus on the minutiae of everyday life in addition to cataclysmic events (physical/material and social) that have been seared into the city's history and its very landscape. the city is a palimpsest and Campanella painstakingly uncovers all of its layers, with the full knowledge that it will continue to generate new identities, influx populations, and despairing dilemmas, while continuing to carry the burdens of its history.
September 9, 2012
New Orleans is in some sense geographically trivial -- you know why it is there, and you can't get lost, regardless of your state of inibriation. Nonetheless, it fascinates me -- there are traces of the past present that every other city seems to obliterate. New Orleans, oddly, seems much older than London -- though it is an order of magnitude younger, at the very least.
Some chapters may bore you -- and if you are a numbers and statistics kind of person, certain measurements will be left lacking -- but this is the one cannonical book to have and read about New Orleans.
Some chapters may bore you -- and if you are a numbers and statistics kind of person, certain measurements will be left lacking -- but this is the one cannonical book to have and read about New Orleans.
January 30, 2024
Emerging repeatedly throughout this volume is the theme of dilemma. It first appears in Bienville's momentous decision regarding where to establish New Orleans. It continues with the stories of levee construction, canal excavation, urban expansion, coastal erosion, and the myriad blessings and curses accompanying the transformation of a dynamic, fluid deltaic landscape into a rigid, controlled cityscape. It appears again in the dramatic story of Manuel Marquez, who found himself on the horns of a classic "lifeboat dilemma" as he and his family rode out the Great Storm of 1915. "Bienville's dilemma," metaphorically speaking, persists throughout New Orleans and coastal Louisiana society today, as citizens contemplate saving the place they love in the face of undeniable geological truths. Anyone who, since Hurricane Katrina, has grappled with rebuilding, considered moving out, contemplated moving in, debated either divesting or investing in New Orleans, or otherwise pondered the city's future, shares in Bienville's dilemma.
Problems end with solutions; dilemmas end with choices.
Though it takes a while to wade through, Richard Campanella's collection of topics and essays regarding the cultural and geographical history of New Orleans is compelling reading. Campanella does a fantastic job of examining a variety of topics of settling in New Orleans: how the landscape was formed, settled, urbanized, populated, manipulated, humanized, devastated, and restored. Starting in the wilderness of the early 1700s and coming to an open-ending in the dilemma facing city administration adjusting to the scientific and emotional responses of rebuilding and resettling after Hurricane Katrina, Campanella deftly navigates the reader through facts and first-hand accounts which, when taken as a whole, provide a detailed illustration of the fragility, beauty, and even futility of New Orleans.
Campanella is a first-rate scholar and an excellent writer, a rare combination. Not many can make geography or 19th-century maps engrossing--but he can. He has his finger on the pulse of New Orleans, able to bridge the different perspectives of the non-native/outsider and an native/insider. While I have enjoyed all his works, this is one of his best forays. Having examined New Orleans in depth, he comes away without easy, pact answers, acknowledging there aren't really any. And after reading this work, the reader cannot help but discern the dearth of easy decisions to be made regarding New Orleans.
Highly recommended.
This was a Catholic city in a Protestant nation, a mixed legal jurisdiction in a land of English common law, and a historically racially intermixed society in a nation traditionally divided strictly between white and black. New Orleans represented the expanding American nation's first major encounter with sophisticated, urban foreignness. From the perspective of America's ethnic geography, then, New Orleans indeed plays a starring role.
It has been said that America Americanized New Orleans. But it may also be said that New Orleans Americanized America.
Problems end with solutions; dilemmas end with choices.
Though it takes a while to wade through, Richard Campanella's collection of topics and essays regarding the cultural and geographical history of New Orleans is compelling reading. Campanella does a fantastic job of examining a variety of topics of settling in New Orleans: how the landscape was formed, settled, urbanized, populated, manipulated, humanized, devastated, and restored. Starting in the wilderness of the early 1700s and coming to an open-ending in the dilemma facing city administration adjusting to the scientific and emotional responses of rebuilding and resettling after Hurricane Katrina, Campanella deftly navigates the reader through facts and first-hand accounts which, when taken as a whole, provide a detailed illustration of the fragility, beauty, and even futility of New Orleans.
Campanella is a first-rate scholar and an excellent writer, a rare combination. Not many can make geography or 19th-century maps engrossing--but he can. He has his finger on the pulse of New Orleans, able to bridge the different perspectives of the non-native/outsider and an native/insider. While I have enjoyed all his works, this is one of his best forays. Having examined New Orleans in depth, he comes away without easy, pact answers, acknowledging there aren't really any. And after reading this work, the reader cannot help but discern the dearth of easy decisions to be made regarding New Orleans.
Highly recommended.
This was a Catholic city in a Protestant nation, a mixed legal jurisdiction in a land of English common law, and a historically racially intermixed society in a nation traditionally divided strictly between white and black. New Orleans represented the expanding American nation's first major encounter with sophisticated, urban foreignness. From the perspective of America's ethnic geography, then, New Orleans indeed plays a starring role.
It has been said that America Americanized New Orleans. But it may also be said that New Orleans Americanized America.
March 19, 2022
This is an outstanding book that belongs on every New Orleanian's reference shelf. Campanella finds the perfect blend of the academic and the accessible, not just dry and data-driven. Compiles in one volume a wealth of fascinating explanations of geology, soil science, meteorology, ethnography, history, economics, architecture, politics, demographics, engineering which might have taken a dozen individual books to assemble and which all help to illustrate the guiding "dilemma" thesis. I liked the way the book was organized: several short essays under a different way to examine the local landscape ( "Forming" "Settling" "Urbanizing" "Populating" "Manipulating" "Humanizing" "Devastating" and "Restoring" (the last of which written during and shortly after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and the public debates which followed, which the author tried to help shape) Just to cite one example, I was particularly impressed with the concise way he unpacked the notion of "Creolism and Place." Richard Campanella continues to contribute regular features along these lines to the Times Picayune newspaper. New Orleanians like myself are happy to have this kind of public intellectual in our midst.
July 1, 2014
Bloody wonderful. This book had me reading a history book for fun for the first time in years. Its essay format, which I at first thought would make it tedious, actually ended up helping its pace by invigorating my interest with each exploration of a new topic. This book has also inspired me to continue my reading in this area and I highly recommend this book to anyone, not just New Orleanians.
December 15, 2015
Writing style varies from compelling to aimless which really defines the book. It is an eccentric collection of articles, usually objective but sometimes lacking a strong but reasoned opinion. Campanella is at heart a debunker, so his stuff is either enlightening or downright annoying. In the end, this is a worthy book, but one strictly for people with a deep interest in New Orleans.
August 7, 2009
City's founder based site on bottom line ignoring bottom land.
December 29, 2014
some fun chapters on architecture.
January 28, 2021
Feeling relieved to have this book done. It took me a while. Very dense reading. But it is nonfiction, which I guess is the tradeoff. The forming of Louisiana is totally fascinating. Here’s an interesting overview of some major colonial era events:
1682 - France discovers that the Mississippi reaches the sea and lays claim, eventually utilizing the knowledge of the Native cultures that were already there.
1755 - Britain begins exiling French settlers from Acadie (modern day Nova Scotia) leading many to settle in the rural areas west of New Orleans due to abundant land and proximity to Francophone culture.
1762 - Napoleon gifts New Orleans to his Spanish cousin, King Carlos III, a year before France was defeated in the French and Indian War (the Seven Years’ War).
1800 - Spain retrocedes New Orleans to France due to weariness of American interest and lack of strong military forces.
1803 - Losing interest in the area, Napoleon signs Louisiana Purchase, ending colonial era.
1804 - Slave uprising overthrows French rule in Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti)
I was surprised about how minimally the author used the term Cajun, which indicates a lineage with the French settlers that were forced to leave Acadia (Nova Scotia) and came to Louisiana. It seems that those were just a fragment of the people that settled in Louisiana, many others coming from France, Spain, Africa, Haiti, and other places. The generation born in Louisiana (especially in New Orleans?) adopted the term Creole, which signified they were born there, not in the old country. Over time it seems the term has been stretched and contorted to mean different things, but the meaning used in this book (presumably the "right" one) was not what I had thought. I'm sure I still don't have it right!
The author has written a huge amount about the area, and I got to this book a little bit late it seems. It was written just a few years after the hurricane (Katrina). Much of the latter half is dedicated to talking about the response to the crisis of land use and conflicting opinions, including those of people wanting to return to their homes even while knowing that another flood is/was likely to happen. There is an urgency and emotiveness in the writing, I think reflecting that the author was right in the middle of these conversations. I’m looking forward to reading some of his other works, including more recent ones.
Hearing that some people were of the opinion that Plaquemines Parish should be abandoned and returned to a more natural state to act as a natural seawall makes me feel a little sad that I haven’t been down there. I’d like to go there to see what it’s like now. I’m sure it will be hard to imagine what it was like back when my family was down there on a farm, producing items to sell in the city, probably speaking French… It’s kind of a sad history because it feels like it’s being washed out to sea, literally flooded, gone and never returning. But I guess that's life. One day we will be gone. Just like that.
So I guess more reason to be joyful in the moment!
1682 - France discovers that the Mississippi reaches the sea and lays claim, eventually utilizing the knowledge of the Native cultures that were already there.
1755 - Britain begins exiling French settlers from Acadie (modern day Nova Scotia) leading many to settle in the rural areas west of New Orleans due to abundant land and proximity to Francophone culture.
1762 - Napoleon gifts New Orleans to his Spanish cousin, King Carlos III, a year before France was defeated in the French and Indian War (the Seven Years’ War).
1800 - Spain retrocedes New Orleans to France due to weariness of American interest and lack of strong military forces.
1803 - Losing interest in the area, Napoleon signs Louisiana Purchase, ending colonial era.
1804 - Slave uprising overthrows French rule in Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti)
I was surprised about how minimally the author used the term Cajun, which indicates a lineage with the French settlers that were forced to leave Acadia (Nova Scotia) and came to Louisiana. It seems that those were just a fragment of the people that settled in Louisiana, many others coming from France, Spain, Africa, Haiti, and other places. The generation born in Louisiana (especially in New Orleans?) adopted the term Creole, which signified they were born there, not in the old country. Over time it seems the term has been stretched and contorted to mean different things, but the meaning used in this book (presumably the "right" one) was not what I had thought. I'm sure I still don't have it right!
The author has written a huge amount about the area, and I got to this book a little bit late it seems. It was written just a few years after the hurricane (Katrina). Much of the latter half is dedicated to talking about the response to the crisis of land use and conflicting opinions, including those of people wanting to return to their homes even while knowing that another flood is/was likely to happen. There is an urgency and emotiveness in the writing, I think reflecting that the author was right in the middle of these conversations. I’m looking forward to reading some of his other works, including more recent ones.
Hearing that some people were of the opinion that Plaquemines Parish should be abandoned and returned to a more natural state to act as a natural seawall makes me feel a little sad that I haven’t been down there. I’d like to go there to see what it’s like now. I’m sure it will be hard to imagine what it was like back when my family was down there on a farm, producing items to sell in the city, probably speaking French… It’s kind of a sad history because it feels like it’s being washed out to sea, literally flooded, gone and never returning. But I guess that's life. One day we will be gone. Just like that.
So I guess more reason to be joyful in the moment!
May 12, 2025
I read this after Unfathomable City as another attempt to understand New Orleans before visiting. They make a good pair, with the cooler, more personal essays in Unfathomable City complementing the more detailed but drier and more academic vignettes in this book. That's not a slam on this one by any means: it's wide-ranging and humane, but definitely told from a different perspective. Definitely better to read Unfathomable City first and this one if you want more detail.
Since I can't help myself, I want to point out that while the maps in this book are truly hideous and unclear, you can actually tell where things are on them, and their design incompetence demands closer reading (I was going to say they "invite inquiry" but only if you find black text on a dark green background inviting). If I have to choose between cluttered but informative maps in this book and beautiful but vapid maps of Unfathomable City, I will take the former.
Since I can't help myself, I want to point out that while the maps in this book are truly hideous and unclear, you can actually tell where things are on them, and their design incompetence demands closer reading (I was going to say they "invite inquiry" but only if you find black text on a dark green background inviting). If I have to choose between cluttered but informative maps in this book and beautiful but vapid maps of Unfathomable City, I will take the former.
July 4, 2021
Essay compilation covering New Orleans history from pre-founding almost to the present. Geographic anchoring minimizes any Great Man aspects to the history, mostly relegating humans to atoms in a society or government. The true star of the book is terrain elevation, and the various natural and human manipulations that have altered New Orleans‘s trajectory over the last 300 years.
Natural levees, silt deposits, architectural adaptations, canals, urban sprawl are all discussed as they regard the gradual increase in general risk of inundation, leading up to Katrina in 2005. Campanella strives to balance the scientifically optimal response to Katrina with the human costs (both economic and cultural) of imposing that response.
Natural levees, silt deposits, architectural adaptations, canals, urban sprawl are all discussed as they regard the gradual increase in general risk of inundation, leading up to Katrina in 2005. Campanella strives to balance the scientifically optimal response to Katrina with the human costs (both economic and cultural) of imposing that response.
October 25, 2022
I’m so glad I bought this at a bookstore in the Garden District. A fascinating look at how geography impacted the settling, growth, culture, and natural disasters in New Orleans. I never knew that the Mississippi River actually helped to RAISE the surrounding land above sea level before it was impeded by the building of levees. The descriptive imagery of this book allows you to easily recognize streets and neighborhoods, helping to connect what you’re reading to places you’ve seen in NOLA. But my favorite part is the structure of this book - it’s 50ish five to seven page vignettes that provide short insights and don’t bog you down in having to recall long chapters of non-fiction. Highly recommend.
November 27, 2019
The author Richard Campanella could be described as a "historical geographer", and he takes that approach to do a critical historical look at the city of New Orleans. New Orleans is my hometown, where I was born and raised, and so the story strikes close to home for me, even though I haven't lived there in many years.
Campanella describes the dilemma that post-Katrina New Orleans faces and the historical (centuries-old) basis for this dilemma. I think this type of dilemma has many parallels for dilemmas that society at large faces, for example, climate change. All-in-all, I think it is a worthwhile read for most anyone.
Campanella describes the dilemma that post-Katrina New Orleans faces and the historical (centuries-old) basis for this dilemma. I think this type of dilemma has many parallels for dilemmas that society at large faces, for example, climate change. All-in-all, I think it is a worthwhile read for most anyone.
October 26, 2024
A collection of geographical essays from Richard Campanella, Bienville's Dilemma covers the whole span of New Orleans history touching on geographical, cultural, historical, linguistic, and culinary topics. There is a significant section discussing the post-Katrina decisions which is very concise and thoughtful. Overall, a must read for those interested in New Orleans' history.
September 28, 2023
Spectacularly researched and scholarly, this book is a great resource to any one who has caught the New Orleans bug. Through the lens of how geography shapes a place, you’ll come away with an education in geology, history, culture, politics and an overall greater appreciation for this unique city.
February 16, 2023
must read for anyone interested in new orleans
March 3, 2025
Greatly enjoyed the analysis of New Orleans and its human geography. The insights are clearly informed by in-depth research and the perspectives shared are interesting to consider.
March 27, 2025
Probably over-annotated this one. Peak nonfiction.
November 6, 2025
SO GOOD. For someone who ADORES maps and topography and looking at how cities are structured, this book is a dream. It beautifully details the reality vs the expectations of the French colony.
March 11, 2017
Fascinating book. Although the format (collection of 2-10 page essays on a wide variety of subjects) make it easy to pick up, it also makes it hard to get through quickly.
Want to read
December 25, 2013As seen at Acadian Books.
Want to read
April 21, 2016LA 911.763 CAM
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews