New Orleans

T. R. Johnson has taught at universities in Louisville and Boston and is now a Professor of English and Weiss Presidential Fellow at Tulane University. He has written books on Lacanian psychoanalysis, the teaching of writing, and prose style and is the editor of New Orleans: A Literary History. Since the late 1990s, he has lived in the 9th Ward of New Orleans near the Mississippi River and hosted a contemporary jazz radio program.

'A thoughtful, comprehensive stations-of-the-cross journey through the literary history and traditions of a city that has done more, pound for pound, to create our American culture than any other. If you love New Orleans, you need this compendium in your library. If you don't love New Orleans, there is something wrong with you and this volume is as valuable a medicinal as a Wild Tchoupitoulas album, a Zulu golden coconut or the middle section of the menu at Mosca's.' David Simon, The Wire and Tremé

• Introduction; 1. Royal Street – A masked ball: Between canal and esplanade; 2. St. Claude Avenue – Hard times and good children: The Lower 9th Ward – Desire – St. Roch – Bywater; 3. Esplanade Avenue – Escape routes: The Marigny – The 7th Ward – Bayou St. John; 4. Basin Street – Memory and music: Congo Square – Storyville – Tremé; 5. St. Charles Avenue – Blood and money: The Garden District – The Irish Channel – The University District – Central City; 6. Outskirts – Writing through loss.