This anthology is a great companion volume to take on a visit to New Orleans. Enjoy these selections with some beignets and coffee at Cafe Du Monde or over a bloody Mary in the court of 2 sisters. If you love New Orleans you can't miss with this book.

I love the Big Easy, but hate the crowds. Reading this book made me feel that I was there--and here I am sitting in my home in New York and dreaming of walking the streets of N.O. with Audubon, Twain, Faulkner, and Codrescu, and the incredibly talented Brenda Marie Osbey. This is an excellent anthology.

I have seen books on New Orleans come and go, but Literary New Orleans is here to stay. Why? Because it combines history, fiction, essays, memoir, and poetry. I grew up here, and I learned things I never knew. For instance, Audubon gave drawing lessons here, Zora Neale Hurston learned Hoo-Doo here, and Walt Whitman worked for a paper here. My favorite is Ishamael Reed's take on Mardi Gras...Priceless.

This book is useful for both the studious geneologist and casual peruser, containing comprehensive, in-depth geneological information as well as a wealth of photos and anecdotes.

The ethereal infrared photography meshed with the insightful narrative is fascinating, not only for the art but for the history of New Orleans. As a genealogist, I am no stranger to learning from the dead. This book, however, teaches about a culture far removed from my North Carolina Scottish roots.

Laughlin's photography goes inside the beauty and decay of New Orleans and surrounds, yielding a surrealistic view that mirrors much literature, but few photographs, of the area. Laughlin often uses models whose faces are distant yet haunting, and has a marvelous eye for architecture. Much more than photographs of a place, these are photographs that become part of the place. Comments by Laughlin and others that accompany the photographs are definitely an enhancement.

Journals are my favorite historical reading. I was amazed at TKW's World - and his view of the final antebellum years in New Orleans.

The read is interesting for what it includes and what it excludes. TKW knew and met every major citizen of the time; from Polk to Beauregard to Dr. Barton. You get a very detailed picture of what it was like for a man of the times; his everyday travels and travails. What it excludes is equally interesting - very little on the women he lived with, slavery, Mardi Gras and occupation.

The accent is definitely architecture and I found myself scanning - rather than reading - page after page of discussions on bricks and beams. Also, novice that I am, I found two errors (in the footnotes).

Still when I reached the end, it was a shock to the system. It felt as though TKW could not deal with occupation - of New Orleans and of his beloved Custom House - and just decided to die. It left me wanting more.

A very luxurious book, richly printed with tons of illustrations.

Favorite passage: "Some are Americans, but the French predominate, and the difference between them appears to be that the former have a little to say about everything, the latter a great deal to say about nothing at all."