Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans And the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945 [Paperback]

Anthony J. Stanonis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2006

Between the World Wars, New Orleans transformed its image from that of a corrupt and sullied port of call into that of a national tourist destination. Anthony J. Stanonis tells how boosters and politicians reinvented the city to build a modern mass tourism industry and, along the way, fundamentally changed the city's cultural, economic, racial, and gender structure.

Stanonis looks at the importance of urban development, historic preservation, taxation strategies, and convention marketing to New Orleans' makeover and chronicles the city's efforts to domesticate its jazz scene, "democratize" Mardi Gras, and stereotype local blacks into docile, servile roles. He also looks at depictions of the city in literature and film and gauges the impact on New Orleans of white middle-class America's growing prosperity, mobility, leisure time, and tolerance of women in public spaces once considered off-limits.

Visitors go to New Orleans with expectations rooted in the city's "past": to revel with Mardi Gras maskers, soak up the romance of the French Quarter, and indulge in rich cuisine and hot music. Such a past has a basis in history, says Stanonis, but it has been carefully excised from its gritty context and scrubbed clean for mass consumption.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Anthony Stanonis gives us a New Orleans that is literal and layered. Creating the Big Easy moves New Orleans into the category of cities with definitive, tourism-based histories. Such cities, progenitors of the future, tell us much about the nature of economic, cultural, and social development." --Hal Rothman, author of Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-first Century

"Studying chambers of commerce, politicians, preservationists and their opponents, novelists, teachers, and the tourists themselves, Anthony Stanonis details the surprisingly complex efforts behind marketing New Orleans as a city with an exotic past. The places and events--the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras, jazz--may be familiar, but the controversies over how or whether they should be tourist attractions are consistently fascinating." --Ted Ownby, Professor of History and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi

"[I]nsightful and significant historical detail. . . Stanonis offers a compelling portrait of the rise of tourism in New Orleans and adds unique insight to our understanding of the city's distinctive history. The book is a thought-provoking and penetrating analysis of the early development of tourism in New Orleans and should be the starting point for historians interested in understanding the city's cultural and economic structure between the two World Wars." --Urban History

About the Author

Anthony J. Stanonis, a native of New Orleans, is currently Lecturer in Modern U.S. History at Queen's University Belfast.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press; 1St Edition edition (June 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820328227
• ISBN-13: 978-0820328225
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,243,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A 'must' for any who would understand the roots of modern New Orleans', August 18, 2006

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans And the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945 (Paperback)

CREATING THE BIG EASY: NEW ORLEANS AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN TOURISM, 1918-45 is especially important today as the city struggles to rebuild and redefine itself. It's a survey of tourism-based development and the cultural and economic forces that transformed New Orleans from a port to a national tourist destination. Urban development, historic preservation and taxes along with the city's efforts to promote its cultural heritage to outsiders makes for an in-depth survey on how visitors are enticed by an image of an urban area's past and present. A 'must' for any who would understand the roots of modern New Orleans' development and the task at hand for rebuilding it.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch