Customer Reviews

A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, With a New Preface

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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.

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.