Creole New Orleans is an excellent account of the shaping of the city of New Orleans, from its early days as a colonial city of the French and Spanish, through the modern city. The book focuses on the gradual americanization of the city and the implications this had for its residents, using the unique race relations in New Orleans as measuring stick.

The editors and co-authors Arnold Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon compiled a series of six essays, broken into three sections of the book. The first section focuses on colonial New Orleans, and the development of the French assimilationist ethos in the policies of French and Spanish Louisiana, especially with regards to slaves, free people of color, and native americans. Part Two deals with The American period. It traces the slow Americanization process of the city. It also explains how different groups, like the Foreign French helped, to stave off the rising tide of Americanization. And finally, Part Three focuses on New Orleans' black community. Attention is given to the rifts developing between Afro-Creoles and Afro-Americans and their struggles over Reconstruction. And it ends with New Orleans in the twentieth century. They explain how the Creole protest tradition in New Orleans was continued in the modern political and social arenas.

This book was extremely informative and thoroughly researched. It did a marvelous job of explaining why New Orleans, often thought to be an exotic and un-American city, is in fact, extremely American. The authors are able to give a convincing account about how the city of New Orleans, through its unique development, has maintained its heritage while adapting to the ways of the rest of the United States. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in American History, Black History, or Louisiana History.

With all of the problems that Orleans and Jefferson Parish Public school systems face and have faced, it is of utmost importance that we understand how things have gotten this way in order to have any real understanding of how to improve the situation. With this in mind, this book should be required reading for administrators, anyone who teaches or aspires to teach in the Orleans or Jefferson Parish Public School System. The authors take the reader on a historical tour from the establishment of the first Orleans Parish public schools in 1841 to the present conditions of schools in the 1990's. In between are issues dealing with the Civil War, integration in the late nineteenth century, segregation, the inequities between black and white schools, the ordeal of desegregation, and the effects having an abundance of parochial schools. I hope this "look back" will help us to understand what we need to do to improve the future of schools in the New Orleans area.

This is the story of Solomon Northup, in his own words, a citizen of New York kidnapped in 1841 and taken to Louisiana as a slave, where he was found twelve years later on a cotton plantation near the Red River. It is a story that will break your heart as Solomon was torn away from his family for over a decade. According to a quote from 1853, when Solomon first published his memoirs, "Think of it: For thirty years a man, with all a man's hopes, fears and aspirations--with a wife and children to call him by the endearing names of husband and father--with a home, humble it may be, but still a home...then for twelve years a thing, a chattel personal, classed with mules and horses. ...Oh! it is horrible. It chills the blood to think that such are." And indeed, this story will both chill--and boil--your blood.

Solomon Northup was an educated literate man who worked in New York and was brutally kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. His autobiography was very detailed with skillfully painted pictures of the people and situations he encountered until at last he was freed. I highly recommend this book to everyone. Solomon Northup was also mentioned in the newly released children's historical novel, The Journal of Darien Dexter Duff, an Emancipated Slave that also takes place in Louisiana.

In an age when most history that is presented to the masses is whitewashed or made politically correct it is quite refreshing to read a historical narrative "warts and all" about a period in American History that many want to forget about or gloss over.

Solomon Northup was an educated, free black man from upstate New York with a wife and children in the 1841 when through a chain of events ended up being kidnapped and sold into slavery. He eventually ended up deep in Louisiana and spent the next 12 years of his life there until he was rescued by a prominent citizen of his home state that knew him.

What stands out in this book to me are the descriptions of the various people he met and how they treated him from being very kind and gracious to vile and wicked. As a southerner I have often heard that slaves were basically happy and contented and this book will immediately put an end such a notion. Even the most illiterate and uneducated slave Solomon met yearned for freedom, as is human nature to do so. That being said there were several decent southern slave owners described in the book who treated their slaves well. One of them William Ford, almost certainly saved Solomon from being lynched by his new owner.

On the flip side there were many vile slave owners as well. Solomon was owned by a carpenter who mistreated him quite badly and Solomon had to fight him twice to prevent himself from being killed by his owner. After one of these fights he fled into the swamp being chased by his owner and several other slave owners with their bloodhounds. His description of the bloodhounds following him into the swamp and him seeing all of the snakes and alligators was quite interesting. Solomon, beside being literate was blessed with a great deal of "street" smarts and common sense. He knew how to evade the dogs when they chased him into the swamp. The aforementioned William Ford saved Solomon from the carpenter's wrath after this episode.

Solomon then went on to spend the rest of his time in captivity with another brutal slave owner. This owner was drunk half the time and continually mistreated all of his slaves. Solomon's rescue came when a Canadian drifter who worked as a laborer agreed to mail a rescue note to Solomon's home town. A few months later Solomon was rescued by a prominent gentlemen from his native New York and was reunited with his family.

This book was fascinating reading and moved at a rapid pace. Most of the books I read I never bother to write a review on unless I found them to be a good read and this is a good read!

If you want to read about slavery as it was and not in glossed over terms or political correct terms then this book is for you. The truth what a concept!