A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans [Hardcover]

Ari Kelman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520234324 | ISBN-13: 978-0520234321 | Publication Date: February 6, 2003 | Edition: 1

This engaging environmental history explores the rise, fall, and rebirth of one of the nation's most important urban public landscapes, and more significantly, the role public spaces play in shaping people's relationships with the natural world. Ari Kelman focuses on the battles fought over New Orleans's waterfront, examining the link between a river and its city and tracking the conflict between public and private control of the river. He describes the impact of floods, disease, and changing technologies on New Orleans's interactions with the Mississippi. Considering how the city grew distant--culturally and spatially--from the river, this book argues that urban areas provide a rich source for understanding people's connections with nature, and in turn, nature's impact on human history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"New Orleans' Mississippi levee, as Kelman explains in this fascinating study, is more than a pile of dirt. It is the key to unraveling the historical dialectic between a great river and an essentially amphibious city. It is also the monumental space of New Orleans' past, where dark plots and heroic dreams remain forever entangled." - Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster "Kelman has written a pioneering environmental history of the evolving relationship between one of the nation's oldest and most exceptional cities, New Orleans, and our greatest river, the Mississippi. For New Orleans, the river offered challenges and opportunities alike, providing the lifeblood of the city's commerce and a signature symbol of its identity even as it also brought floods, disease, and death. It is a fascinating story." - William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

"New Orleans' Mississippi levee, as Kelman explains in this fascinating study, is more than a pile of dirt. It is the key to unraveling the historical dialectic between a great river and an essentially amphibious city. It is also the monumental space of New Orleans' past, where dark plots and heroic dreams remain forever entangled."--Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

"Kelman has written a pioneering environmental history of the evolving relationship between one of the nation's oldest and most exceptional cities, New Orleans, and our greatest river, the Mississippi. For New Orleans, the river offered challenges and opportunities alike, providing the lifeblood of the city's commerce and a signature symbol of its identity even as it also brought floods, disease, and death. It is a fascinating story."--William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

"Kelman makes elegant sense of a story as tangled as the Louisiana bayous and tells his tale with a verve to rival that of New Orleans itself. A strong addition to American environmental history."--John R. McNeill, author of Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (February 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520234324
• ISBN-13: 978-0520234321
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,252,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Uneven, August 4, 2003

By A Customer

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This review is from: A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (Hardcover)

This is a book by an academic for academics. That being said, this topic ached to be addressed. Kelman has done his homework concerning the first two centuries of New Orleans' relationship with the Mississippi. The third (1918-present) seems to stop with the defeat of the notorious riverfront expressway. The river is likely (according to some scientists) to shift away from New Orleans, leaving the riverfront a muddy trickle. Kelman is silent on this. The degree of pollution and the efforts to clean up the lower part of the river go unsung as well. The last parts of the book have a rushed feeling, as if the expansive early history sapped the author's resources and there was little left worth saying. Lively it's not, but the book is important and a good reference work for further research.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars get "Rising Tide" instead, February 13, 2007

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paul (oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, With a New Preface (Paperback)

There's nothing wrong with this book. It's a good book. But it pales beside a great book, John Barry's "Rising Tide," that covers much of the same material in greater depth, is infinitely better written, and which this book seems to have borrowed from. Kelman does give more of the early history than does Barry, as well as more about such things things as yellow fever. From an acadmeic perspective re: the geography of New Orleans, Richard Campanella's work is better also.