I have mixed reactions to this book. Overall, I think there is great research here, but it is research that wasn't analyzed, wasn't well organized, or presented in context. This could have been a really fascinating read, but instead it was a chore. My interest in Shaw kept me reading, despite the organization and presentation problems.
Carpenter did a couple of interviews with people who knew Shaw socially as a young man. This helps to flesh out Shaw a little bit as a person.Carpenter obviously spent much time poring through archives to find correspondence and news clippings about Shaw and the Trade Mart. This information is valuable to have. There is not much publicly available about this mysterious and fascinating historical figure. What is available is often severely biased. Carpenter has managed to just present raw research without any particular bias for or against Shaw--and there's definitely value in that neutrality.
However, it seems like the author just summarized archive items as he found them, then smashed those notes together into this book. Much of it is a jumble of cobbled-together minutia detailing Shaw's activities in support of the Trade Mart. Shaw's sexuality is dealt with some. Shaw's French Quarter revitalization and redevelopment activities are presented in a very blow-by-blow fashion without any analysis of what it meant for the City of New Orleans or local redevelopment as a whole. I wanted very much to learn more about Shaw's international and intelligence connections--the shadowy stuff not found in university archives. Carpenter did not pull hard enough on those threads. In fact, it seems that Carpenter willfully neglected those topics; one has to wonder why. Also, it bothered me that while Carpenter neglected the more shadowy and unsavory facets of Shaw's life, he parroted some of the ridiculous character assassinations directed at Jim Garrison over the years; for example, Carpenter presents as possible the lie that Jim Garrison was sexually obsessed with Shaw, fueling his trying Shaw for the murder of JFK. For someone so careful about not besmirching Shaw, Carpenter plays fast and loose with allegations against Garrison.
Some outside research could have gone a long way toward making this a great book. It could have placed the story of Shaw in a larger context. It did not deal enough with Shaw's globalist, CIA, and other intelligence connections. It should have delved deeper into Jim Garrison's trial of Shaw on charges he participated in the JFK assassination. Failing in those areas, this was a vapid read.
Furthermore, the writing style is terribly jumbled. It was missing the fundamental elements of topic paragraphs at the start of well-organized chapters and topic sentences at the start of paragraphs. I've seen better composition in the work of college freshmen. To me, this reinforced that notes had just been cobbled together.
Despite these problems, the book is worth reading for what it does well......detailed summaries of archive items related to Shaw.
I encourage Carpenter to work with a good content editor, take this detailed research, do some contextual and background research, and weave it together into an interesting narrative that does justice to this fascinating and mysterious man and his milieu. I would buy the book.
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