Popular New Orleans

New Orleans is unique – which is precisely why there are many Crescent Cities all over the world: for almost 150 years, writers, artists, cultural brokers, and entrepreneurs have drawn on and simultaneously contributed to New Orleans’s fame and popularity by recreating the city in popular media from literature, photographs, and plays to movies, television shows, and theme parks. Addressing students and fans of the city and of popular culture, Popular New Orleans examines three pivotal moments in the history of New Orleans in popular media: the creation of the popular image of the Crescent City during the late nineteenth century in the local-color writings published in Scribner’s Monthly/Century Magazine; the translation of this image into three-dimensional immersive spaces during the twentieth century in Disney’s theme parks and resorts in California, Florida, and Japan; and the radical transformation of this image following Hurricane Katrina in public performances such as Mardi Gras parades and operas. Covering visions of the Crescent City from George W. Cable’s Old Creole Days stories (1873-1876) to Disneyland’s "New Orleans Square" (1966) to Rosalyn Story’s opera Wading Home (2015), Popular New Orleans traces how popular images of New Orleans have changed from exceptional to exemplary.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

A taste of New Orleans--right in your own kitchen Just like a big bowl of gumbo, New Orleans is a melting pot of cultures and flavors. Its vibrant cuisine is as unique as the city itself, evidenced by the delightful scent of Creole and Cajun cooking wafting through the streets. Let The Best of New Orleans Cookbook transport you there with amazing dishes--straight out of Bourbon Street--you can make right in your own home. More than just decadent recipes, you'll find the flavor of NOLA all over this New Orleans cookbook--from profiles of iconic culinary landmarks like Café du Monde to where to find the ingredients that define its cooking, like andouille, crawfish, and Louisiana hot sauce. Because eating and drinking go hand and hand in New Orleans, you'll also find recipes for the libations it's most famous for--so mix yourself up a Sazerac, grab this New Orleans cookbook, and let's get cookin'! Inside The Best of New Orleans Cookbook you'll find: Top five picks--A local's guide to favorite places and things to do when visiting, including the five best bars and spots to enjoy raw oysters. Cook with confidence--Learn what the Cajun Holy Trinity is, how to whip up a roux, and what it takes to fry like a pro. A little something extra--Look for a lagniappe at the end of most every recipe for tips, tricks, and historical highlights related to the dish. Enjoy Big Easy cooking with this fun, easy New Orleans cookbook.

Over the course of the twentieth century, African Americans in New Orleans helped define the genres of jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk. In recent decades, younger generations of New Orleanians have created a rich and dynamic local rap scene, which has revolved around a dance-oriented style called "bounce." Hip-hop has been the latest conduit for a "New Orleans sound" that lies at the heart of many of the city's best-known contributions to earlier popular music genres. Bounce, while globally connected and constantly evolving, reflects an enduring cultural continuity that reaches back and builds on the city's rich musical and cultural traditions. In this book, the popular music scholar and filmmaker Matt Miller explores the ways in which participants in New Orleans's hip-hop scene have collectively established, contested, and revised a distinctive style of rap that exists at the intersection of deeply rooted vernacular music traditions and the modern, globalized economy of commercial popular music. Like other forms of grassroots expressive culture in the city, New Orleans rap is a site of intense aesthetic and economic competition that reflects the creativity and resilience of the city's poor and working-class African Americans.

Researched and written by residents of the city, this guide has been updated to give information on sights, music, shops, restaurants, nightlife and festivals. Details include how to spend the perfect Mardi Gras, where to find the best Creole and Cajun food and trips out of the city.