Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
New Orleans is the most elusive of American cities. The product of the centuries-long struggle among three mighty empires--France, Spain, and England--and among their respective American colonies and enslaved African peoples, it has always seemed like a foreign port to most Americans, baffled as they are by its complex cultural inheritance.
The World That Made New Orleans offers a new perspective on this insufficiently understood city by telling the remarkable story of New Orleans’s first century--a tale of imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the very different revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. It demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality at the time of Louisiana’s statehood in 1812. By then, important roots of American music were firmly planted in its urban swamp--especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans appeared en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor to the city put it, “rock the city.”
This book is a logical continuation of Ned Sublette’s previous volume, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, which was highly praised for its synthesis of musical, cultural, and political history. Just as that book has become a standard resource on Cuba, so too will The World That Made New Orleans long remain essential for understanding the beautiful and tragic story of this most American of cities.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
First-rate local history
Customer Rating:
Louisiana natives have always known there are two independent aspects to their state: New Orleans and everyplace else. Like other major ports, the Crescent City has always played host to a mix of cultures, but this is still the American city visitors are most likely to find "foreign." In this very readable cultural narrative of what makes New Orleans historically so unique, Sublette traces the city's development from its founding on the highest point available at the Southern end of the Mississippi, to its rapid progress through three different colonial regimes (French for a few years, Spanish for two generations, French again for three weeks, and American ever since), to the arrival of statehood in 1819. He also points out that until 1962, New Orleans was also a major "Caribbean" port. The Cuban blockade which was instituted that year did major damage to the city's economy and cultural relations -- a decline into which Katrina may have driven the last nail. (The jury will be out on that for awhile yet.) As the author of a well-received book on Cuban music, Sublette is also closely tuned into that side of New Orleans history and culture, pointing out that Place Congo, where slaves and then freedmen gathered to make music and dance for more than a century, is only a block or two from the small studio where in 1947 Roy Brown recorded "Good Rockin' Tonight" -- arguably the first rock-`n'-roll tune. Fascinating bits of less-known history crop up all through this book, from the special place Napoleon Bonaparte had in the local imagination and the effects of pro-French sentiment among the Irish, to the special place mockery of whites had in the slave and free black communities.
This Book Allowed me to Understand New Orleans in a New Way
Customer Rating:
This book, as previously noted, is a complex, detailed and enthralling (for history buffs) book that ties together many different historical threads that make up one part of the culture, especially the music culture, of New Orleans. While my heart has gone out to New Orleans and its people since Katrina, this book really made me understand so much more of what makes New Orleans unique, and what the U.S. will lose in losing some of the people who make up New Orleans' culture.
In addition, when recently in New Orleans, we attended a local festival (the Mirliton Festival), and when a local group, 101 Runners, played "Injun" music, I knew exactly what was going on, thanks to Mr. Sublette's book. I felt privileges to see, and be a little part of, this apect of the local culture.
Best History of New Orleans Available
Customer Rating:
There aren't many good histories of New Orleans available and this is one of the best and most comprehensive (as far as how much of that history it covers...i don't mean to imply it is a complete history) i have come across. For those who know the New Orleans area well, the anecdotes regarding characters who have generally been lost to history for whom bridges, neighborhoods, and streets are named will fascinate and amuse. Overall the information and the reverent tone with which it is presented make this a must read for both citizens and lovers of the City of New Orleans.I have made this a gift for a half dozen friends and family.
Wow!
Customer Rating:
Sublette has done an amazing job pulling together political, cultural and social elements into a very compelling narrative. And super-informative too. Extremely impressive historical writing (and this is coming from a history major).
I LOVE how international and broad the perspective is. He really illuminates the dynamics of the time in a fantastic and vivid way. It's seriously among the most readable and thorough books I've read.
A fascinating book but....
Customer Rating:
as enlightening as it is it has a couple of major problems. It just peters out at the end as if the author lost focus and couldn't figure out what to do about it. The chapter on the "Indians" seemed to be just tacked on! It was as if it was taken from another book. It didn't fit this book at all. Maybe it would have if the author had continued his narritive in a linear fashion. I'm surprised the publisher or editor let this glaring problem go! Also there is the VERY tiresome rehashing of the "Did Tom sire Sally's children " routine. To further the sin the writer uses this as premise to launch into an anti-Jefferson rant. This is amateurish and I'm again surprised the editor didn't rein the author. Thomas Jefferson had his many flaws as did all the founders but I doubt he was as evil as the author makes him out to be. Other than those problems I enjoyed the book very much!
Select button not working? 
