Plantation Homes of Louisiana and the Natchez Area [Hardcover]

David King Gleason (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 134 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (December 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807110582
• ISBN-13: 978-0807110584
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 14.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #520,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely Louisiana, May 13, 2005

By 

Shannon Deason (Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plantation Homes of Louisiana and the Natchez Area (Hardcover)

This book just takes your breath away. The houses are so beautiful and the photographs so vivid. Louisiana is perhaps the most blessed with homes from the old south and this book does them such a great service. It's nothing short of amazing that so many of them have survived, it's a testement to the quality of the builders, mostly slaves, the cypress wood used so often and benign neglect. Thank God these wonderful homes where not burned during the Civil War or torn down by short sighted developers. It's really lucky for us that this part of Louisiana has been virtually asleep for 150 years, but in the last 30 years it has awaken like a Pheonix and these houses have been restored and cared for, I am so grateful to Mr. Gleason for having created this book and for the preservationists that saved the homes themselves. I have visited many of these grand plantations and you can't help but be in awe of the beauty and saddened at the same time about the cruel institution that created them. I most appreciate the homes that have maintained their slave quarters, everyone should have to see the way these people lived, it was not all zippidy do da zippidy aye, I assure you...one must always view the historic south through this prism to understand the struggle to overcome. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a love for all things beautiful.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good, October 15, 2008

By 

Maria P. Magliano "Mrs. Kimble Says" (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plantation Homes of Louisiana and the Natchez Area (Hardcover)

I got Plantation Homes to get a feel for antebellum plantation architecture. This book provides a great overview of plantation houses and the grounds around them. Several of the homes have been demolished or destroyed by fire, so it's really wonderful to see a last glimpse of what they were. Some houses --mostly ones that are abandoned-- are obfuscated by the amount of greenery in front of them, so they're hard to see, but many other photos are really beaufitul. I hoped we could see more of the homes on the inside, especially those that the book mentions have been beautifully restored and are privately owned.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay Book But Not For Repeat Viewing, July 16, 2007

By 

Art and Soul "ACottageArtist" (Texas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Plantation Homes of Louisiana and the Natchez Area (Hardcover)

First of all, I love the South, and love plantation homes. The photographs in this book are very good. I personally didn't enjoy the photos of the rundown and derelict plantations. I bought this book because I thought it contained BEAUTIFUL pictures of the finest homes. And most of them are very nice, BUT...First of all, this is a pricey book.I once had a slim volume offerred by the Travel bureau that was better than this book. If all you want is to have a pretty coffee table book, it's fine. I personally would have preferred they leave out the aerial photos high above the homes...and the photos of derelict, rundown plantations and included more interior shots or different angles of the really beautiful plantations. I found that I looked through it once, but will probably rarely look through it again. Though it is well done for what it is, when reading the reviews before purchasing, I had a different impression of what this book is.